Talk of the Town suffers 8-5 defeat

JWB looks to make late season run

I love the Talk of the Town, always have. Now I haven’t been in the Talk for a long time but back when I had a certain penchant for Early Times bourbon, a.k.a. Any Times, the Talk of the Town was nice enough to offer Early Times drinks for $1.25 every Friday night. They called it Bourbon Night.

Drafts of Meister Brau were 75 cents, pool was 50 cents and there was this guy, Mike I believe was his name, who lived at the Talk. I don’t mean "lived" there as in he was always there. I mean he really did live there and he had a cot that he would sleep on upstairs. There was an incredible bowling machine downstairs and every now and then a long-haired red-headed guy named Jim Morrison would come to the bar with the biggest fish he caught that day in his hands.
The bartenders cooked frozen Tombstone pizzas in a mini-pizza-oven set up behind the bar and it was the best pizza in town. If you wanted a hot dog, they would take a frozen one, stick it in a beer mug full of water and boil it in a microwave.
At closing, you could grab a frozen Tombstone pizza, take it home, set the oven to 425 degrees, set the pizza in there and fall asleep until the whole house was full of smoke.
But I digress…
John Williams Builders (JWB) handed the Talk of the Town an 8-5 loss in town league action on Tuesday, January 29. Both teams came into the game somewhere near the bottom of the standings with one win apiece but poised to make a late-season run at the rest of the league.
Judging by the game, it appears JWB may just be that team, especially with the mid-season addition of Isaac Long.
Long started the scoring off for JWB two minutes into the game when a shot/pass toward the Talk goal caught Potts off guard and slipped past him and into the net.
Talk skater Scott Isensee tied the game, taking a pass from Stewart Gross to net and scoring, but a goal by Willy Miller one minute later gave the lead back to JWB.
Hillary Buscovick added to the JWB lead in the opening minute of the second period, when a knuckler from the wing confused Potts and slipped by him.
JWB converted a face-off in the Talk zone into their fourth goal of the game when Clif Dimon fired a slap-shot from the point through traffic.
The game was on the brink of disaster for the Talk until Roland Mason found Joel Lewis open on the weak side with a pass and Lewis stuffed it past JWB goalie Jay Harris.
A minute later, Lewis fed Stewart Gross in the slot and Gross beat Harris top-shelf, pulling the Talk back into the game.
Miller scored again when Megan Paden battled for a loose puck in the Talk zone and dished it back to Miller for a wide-open wrist-shot from just inside the blue line and a 5-3 JWB lead.
Lewis recorded his second goal of the night in the first 30 seconds of the third period to cut the JWB lead back down to one, but John Mortell answered with his first strike of the night to put JWB ahead 6-4.
Like so many bar patrons at the Talk of the Town bar, the Talk just didn’t know when to quit and fired a series of shots at Harris in a snow-blanketed flurry in front of the JWB net.
Harris stopped the first three but Gross finally found a seam by Harris to pull the Talk back to within one of JWB, with seven minutes left in the game.
Long’s hustle in the final minutes of the game determined the result as he chased after a loose puck in the corner and fed Rachael Miller in the slot for a goal.
At that point the Talk was done and the remainder of the game was played in their zone with Mortell adding one more for JWB on a no-look shot for the 8-5 JWB win.