Battalion Boggled

Killer Strawberries 4 Battalion 1

Game Report

February 16, 2012

Record: 13-3-3

It is a perverse Strawberrian pleasure to see the disgruntled looks upon the pimpled visages of its opponents at the end of a game which has just concluded in the Strawbs’ favour. Sure, the veteran squad has its speedsters: the swift Mayor Maynot, the truculent Lil Wagner and the on-the-edge-of-chaos MagBoy. But a hockey team needs just the right combination of speed, raw talent and experience. Even if most of the experience is of the dubious variety, the Killer Strawberries have oodles of it and use it to advantage on almost every occasion. There are many indicators of this invaluable accumulated experience: tattered equipment handed down in the sixties to some current Strawbs and still worn with pride, bottoms of hockey bags littered with stubs of medical tape, a cornucopia of concussions, crappy tales oft-repeated, and more gray hair than the Elysian Fields Retirement Home.

Last night, the Battalion, a good hockey team currently holding down 4^th place, were the most recent victims of a Strawberry hockey beating. At 10 minutes to game time, things did not look promising. The team’s goaltender of the moment was somewhere in Nashville, strumming his pain with his fingers. The replacement goalie could not make bail. The replacement’s backup was having his nails done. MagBoy, banned from the net for 10 years, 8 years ago, (with the Executive holding an option for a further 10 years of banishment) was scratched as a forward and relegated to the pipes. Miracle of miracles. It was as if Jesse The Leak, the squad’s only previous goaltender to be inducted into the Butthole Bottomfeeders Hall of Fame, was in charge of puck stopping. Impossible stops were made, defensemen cursed at and a softie let in. It was déjà vu all over again.

At the other end of the rink, the Killer Strawberries were efficient, potting 4 goals in the first period and coasting (panting?) through the second, knowing its own net was impenetrable. This reporter is unable to recall the names of the goal scorers, as he was forced to sign autographs in the lobby for the full hour. While not wishing to brag, said reporter has been invited to the Aloha Baby Compound in Oahu, home to the Strawberries’ inscrutable Executive. There, a dinner will be held to honour him for his new book, A Tale of Two Shitties, a retrospective on the glorious careers of the team’s founders and spiritual leaders, Rob The Torch (aka The Vice) and Ice Marshal Walpole.

Note: Dash Headlong failed to score.

After the game, the hockeyists rushed off to the Terminal Tavren to get their free copies of the Tale and to christen the publication with spilled beer and unrepeatable taunts.

4 Creemore, 2 Muskoka Cream Ale, 2 Bud, 16 Steamwhistle, 3 pounds of petrified poultry and fond memories of the team’s best ever goalie were consumed.