| The Knights
had been waiting all season to play against their league-famous
goalie who had jumped ship to "Boico Engineering"
during the off-season and hoped to give Joey a "Knight"
he'd NEVER FORGET!
The Knights started
the "head games" early on - even before the
game - using the high-volume "JOEYYYYYYYYYYYYY' call from assistant coach McDonald
who had sworn revenge and retribution on Joey since the
season had begun.
As the two teams prepared
to battle, posters began to show up mysteriously all
around the arena! Posters claiming JOEY!!!!! Posters with
Photo's of JOEY with a puck embedded in his forehead,
posters claiming "JOEY MUST Go Down!"
.... the
crowd buzzed in anticipation!!
Unknown to their on-time-inner
goalie, while the clock ticked down the seconds to the
start the game, the Knights huddled secretly in locker
room #9 donning their now-famous JOEY-KNight-Jersey's
- their old
navy-blue jersey's with a variety of "Joey-Emblems"
on their chests! Some had a smiling JOEY! Others had Joey
with no front teeth, others had the Joey-puck-embedded-profile
and one .. Steve Benninger's, had a smiling Joey with a
red circle and a line through it ... The Knights were
ready for JOEY!
The Boico-Knight match-up
was surprisingly even during the first period ... despite
a celebrated Pavelich-Benninger 1-2 punch on the first
line, Joey was able to keep the game scoreless through
the first period.
10 minutes later, the
Knights found themselves more than half-way through the
second period (and the game!) still scoreless! At this
point, JOEY confessed later, he was actually starting to
entertain ideas like : "hey - one fluke
goal and we've got a shot at winning this!"
... and that nightmare was nearly realized as Gerry
Krause got called for a cheap tripping penalty (the first
penalty of the night) putting Boico on a 5-4 power-play.
It didn't look good for the Friday Knights and some
actually thought that they could see some of JOEY's
pearly-white's gleaming out from under his mask as the
Boico power-play began.
Ironically - that power-play
was the beginning of the end for JOEY and the Boico-Boys
... playing down 4 on 5 gave Steve Benninger and Marty
Pavelich just the added incentive (and maneuvering room!)
that they needed and a the Knights suddenly
moved to the next level! Despite the manpower
advantage, Boico couldn't seem to control the puck and it
was all Marty and Steve for the length of the power play.
The two teamed up to wipe the smile off of JOEY's
face and pretty soon he was sliding, kicking,
blocking, moving, dancing and even standing on his head
as if it were an old re-play from the fall-season Friday
evenings at the Detroit skate club. And as it always is
on those Fall-and-Winter late-night Friday evenings at
DSC, it was a pretty evenly matched battle ... JOEY took
his game up to the next level to keep Steve and Marty's
vicious attack at bay. It looked like a
classic stalemate until Marty hit EVERYONE (including
JOEY!) with the big surprise of the KNight!
\Tommy Partain - cool
under the pressure of the power-play saw Marty breaking
for open ice and hit him with a crisp pass - right on the
money. Marty made two patented "Pavelich-Pivots"
to get around a Boico defender and an embarrassed
Boico winger. This left Marty with a clear shot at
JOEY (his 2nd or third of the powerplay, but this time he
had some room to "play"). Marty picked a small
sliver of white-space between JOEY's crouching frame
and the post and started winding up for his goalie-decapitating
slapper. JOEY tensed for the delivery - and being no
stranger to Marty's cannon-shots was respectful but
not afraid. And being the miserly goalie that he is -
JOEY eased forward cutting Marty's angle to slim
proportions. The entire arena froze in anticipation of
the mighty blast.
Marty still "fully
wound" started his downstroke and JOEY eased forward
just an inch or two more ... it looked like another
"who'll beat-who" drama played out so many
times before on Friday nights in the past few years ...
it could've gone either way - EXCEPT FOR THE SURPRISE!
Marty stopped his mighty drive just a few inches from
contact and tapped the puck harmlessly sideways -
surprisingly NOT goalward, but on a lazy dribbling
path towards the opposite boards. The arena
remained frozen in time - could the unflappable IHL
veteran have "choked" on this golden
opportunity??!?!? Had JOEY prevailed without so much as
the crack of the puck on his pads?!?!? What had Marty
done?!??
Pavelich had seen the play
developing the way Michelangelo sees David in a block of
marble, the way DaVinci sees MonaLisa on a blank canvass,
the way Pete McDonald sees a reverberating "JOEY!!!!"
in a quiet lockeroom ....
Streaking in from the blue
line at a speed Marty had anticipated was the Steve
Benninger freight-train and it was at top-speed and
bearing in on JOEY and the completely open right-hand
side of the net ... Stevie one-timed the perfectly placed
slapper-turned-pass change of pace that Pavelich had
delivered up and sent the puck rising into the far
reaches of the net behind JOEY and instantly "un-froze"
the silent eternity that had been the last second and a
half since Marty's wind-up.
The Friday Knight bench
erupted and as the sticks beat out a celebratory rhythm
on the boards and walls of the Troy Ice Center Rink #2, the
unmistakable fog-horn voice of Assistant Coach Pete
McDonald bellowed out a "JOEY!!!! THE
FLOODGATES ARE OPENED!" that rang thru the arena. Marty
had done with a small tap of his lumber what all his
forceful slap-shots and the Knights good efforts hadn't
been able to do for more than half the game : put one
past the great JOEY! Thank the spirit of the GREAT ONE
that Steve Benninger was there to finish what Marty had
started! The only question now was "how
many would the Knights get - and would Coach
McDonald be able to fulfill his season-long threat of
sneaking on thru JOEY's 5-hole?"
Within 5 minutes (the
end of the second period and the first few seconds of the
third period) those questions were answered - John Dharte
tipped in a Glen Boice slapper to put the Knights up 2-0
with a minute left in the second period and Terry Toland
made it 3-0 by slapping in a second-of-the-game Pavelich-Partain
perfect set-up.
But what of big-mouth Pete's
bold promise to smoke one past
JOE? There was only 2 minutes left in the game when the
Production Line took the ice (the bench groaned because
they KNEW these normally short-shifters just might stay
out there until they got one past JOEY! ....). Macaskill,
Rochon and McDonald worked hard but just couldn't put
enough pressure on JOEY to get him to cave ... so with
about 1:40 left to go - and no apparently no way to get
through the stone wall ... Pete McDonald was faced with
eating his words ... when suddenly he found a loose puck
and looked up to see JOEY in position and ready to shut
him down yet one more time. Pete readied his stick
for one last patented McDonald-wrister when something
quite miraculous occurred ...
Was it a mental lapse on
Pete's part? Had his heart, like the Grinch's on
Christmas Day in Whoville, suddenly grown three times in
size? Had the shock of seeing his idol Marty give up a
slap-shot opportunity for the good of the team effort
made him suddenly team-wary? Or did he see that there was
again NO WAY to get the puck past
JOEY???? Whatever the case - it will be debated in
Hooters and the Wagon Wheel and the Moose preserve for
years to come - but regardless of why - Pete ate his
words that moment and slid the puck, as his idol Marty
had done a period earlier, to a piece of empty ice
that a line-mate was rapidly approaching. Mike
Macaskill - almost fainted as he saw the beautiful pass
coming from the normally greedy-gut McDonald who
desperately had needed to get a goal of his own. Had
Pete flipped?!? Mike almost ALMOST
wasn't ready for what he was hand-delivered
- but he snapped out of it just it time to ram the puck
past JOEY. The Production Line had scored, the Knights
had gone to a 4-0 victory and Pete McDonald had surprised
us all (including JOEY!) by passing up his chance to
score and passing the puck to an open Mike Macaskill.
The celebration overflowed
into the locker room, into the parking lot and into
"Joe Cools Bar & Grill", and into the wee
hours of the next morning as JOEY joined
his abandoned teammates and even bought the beer (of
course - JOEY drank the bitter-sweet thirst-quenching
libation of "Loser-Beer") and everyone asked
the question : "What would've happened if
Marty had finished up with that slapper that he started
late in the 2nd period?"
Some say - Marty was DUE
to hit the sweet spot and beat JOEY clean - others say
that JOEY would've won the battle of the blast - no one
will ever know .... What we do know is that Marty's
pass sealed the victory for the Knights and may have even
changed Pete McDonald forever .... As coach Scotty Bowman
Thomas and Assistant Coach Pete Dave Lewis McDonald piled
into the car for the sweet ride home - Pete gave Steve
the high five and said wistfully with maybe a hint
of a tear in his eye : "... I can't believe I
passed that puck to Macaskill - I'll NEVER hear the end of not scoring on
JOEY " ...
.... and he WON'T !
Click Here to
see the post game pictures !
Scotty
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