Aeros 3, Quad City Flames 1: Aeros Douse The Flames To Defeat Bad Ice and Quad City

I’m not sure who is responsible for handling the ice and arena conditions at Toyota Center, but whoever it is should have their ass fired. The Aeros got the 3-1 win over the Quad City Flames tonight, but not only did they have to battle the Flames, they had to battle hot, humid temperatures on the ice that made smooth skating on the ice impossible.

This affected the Aeros on many occasions tonight as the team had several odd-man rushes toward the goal that resulted in no shots or bad shots on goal because the puck wasn’t sliding on a smooth surface and the players couldn’t get where they should be. The Aeros first goal, which came at 56 seconds into the second period came on one of those rare instances tonight where the players were able to adjust to the ice properly. Jesse Schultz fed a breaking Benoit Pouliot who was able to fire the puck past Quad City goalie Leland Irving for the goal.

“It was a perfect pass,” Pouliot said. “That’s his game. Schultzie can pass the puck like no one else.” As to the ice conditions, Pouliot felt that “we could have maybe just slowed down the game a bit. I tried to go too fast at times and I would just go by [the puck] for no reason.”

“The heat in the building affected our wind a little and the movement of the puck,” coach Kevin Constantine said. “It was not as good of ice and our guys were dragging.”

Krys Kolanos got the game winning goal when he tipped the puck past Irving at 14:15 of the second period. And Paul Albers sealed the win with a slap shot from up by the blue line at the 18:50 mark of the third period.

Unlike many of their past games, where the Aeros have relied on their power play to overcome poor five-on-five play, tonight saw the Aeros five-on-five play working better than the power play.

“We scored three goals [on the five-on-five],” Pouliot said after the game. “Usually we rely on the power play too much and not try too hard on the five-on-five, but tonight was a different story….We’ve just got to that bring every night.”

The 3-1 win came on a night when most of the West Division was silent. The Aeros record is now 32-23-1-8 (73 points) and they’re now three points up on the third place Rockford IceHogs (70 points), four points up on the fourth place Chicago Wolves (69 points), and five points up on the fifth place Peoria Rivermen (68 points).

The Aeros will next play on Friday night, at Toyota Center, against Quad City once again. They’ll travel to San Antonio for a game against the Rampage on Saturday night, then they’ll take on Rockford in Toyota Center on Sunday afternoon.

SOME MISCELLANEOUS GAME NOTES:

For a change of pace, we decided to hit up a couple of non-star of the game players for their wisdom into the game. Barry Brust, who didn’t play because of injury gave the best, most precise bit of wisdom into the victory when he said the key to the game was “to score more points than the other team.”

And Matt Kassian, who played because of an illness to Jason Ryznar, said that the key was that, even though Quad City once again scored the first goal of the game, “we rebounded really well and we stuck with it and were able to take over the game.”

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Some notable notes from tonight’s game included Corey Locke setting a career-high when he assisted on Benoit Pouliot’s second period goal. The assist was Locke’s 43rd for the season, eclipsing his previous mark of 42. He now has a four-game point streak (0-4=4). Jesse Schultz, meanwhile, has a point in 10 of his last 12 games. And John Lammers played in the 100th AHL game of his career.

Also, this was the first game of the season to be missed by Jason Ryznar, who couldn’t play because of a flu-like illness. Ryznar was the last Aero of the season to miss a game. Thus the Aeros will have no players play in every game this season.

The Aeros are now 10-3-0-0 at home since the first of January. And they are now 17-4-0-2 when leading after two periods. But even more impressive, the team is now 11-8-0-5 when trailing after one period.

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The three stars of the game, as named by the Aeros, were 1) Krys Kolanos, 2) Benoit Pouliot, and 3) Quad City’s David Van der Gulik. But those of us up on press row – tonight that would be me and the Chron’s Andrew Ferraro – have decided to start naming our own three stars.

So, our three stars of the night were 1) Krys Kolanos, 2) Benoit Pouliot, and 3) Paul Albers – it was his goal that iced the victory.

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And to play us out tonight, I thought I would take a live performance from Foreigner playing “Cold as Ice.” Maybe the Toyota Center arena crew will see this and get the right idea for how arena conditions should be on ice during the game.



Cross posted over at The ClownVision Chronicles.