QCY 03/13 -- The Aeros Didn't Start The Fire, And Sure Didn't Quench It

With only 16 games remaining in the season, and Houston Aeros battling for playoff positioning, it’s more than a just a cliché to say that every game is important. Yet tonight, it appeared that it was the Quad City Flames who were playing for the playoffs and the Aeros who were just trying to play out the season.

It isn’t so much that the Aeros lost 6-3 before a Toyota Center crowd of 5083. It’s the way the way the Aeros looked as they were losing 6-3 before a Toyota Center crowd of 5083.

They looked, almost, as if they didn’t care.

“We gave them a lot of chances,” Corey Locke said after the game. “I don’t think we moved the puck as well as we wanted to. They capitalized on some of their chances.”

The Aeros had the 3-2 lead as the first period ended, scoring twice on the power play, but the team looked pretty awful while taking the lead, and while Nolan Schaefer didn’t look that great in the crease, he wasn’t getting much help from his teammates. And by the time Schaefer allowed two goals in the second period, one just sensed the game was over, especially after the Aeros were unable to capitalize on a five-on-three power play with over a minute left in the second period.

And come the third period, it was as if the Aeros just didn’t even bother to show up as the team gave up two more goals.

“We have to be honest about the fact that we just didn’t compete at a level necessary to win through sixty minutes. We have to be honest about that,” head coach Kevin Constantine said. “We certainly didn’t play it right tonight.”

The loss drops the team’s record to 32-24-1-8 (73 points) with 15 games left to play. They’re one point up on the Rockford IceHogs who are at 33-27-0-6 (72 points) and two points up on the Chicago Wolves who are 34-31-2-1 (71 points).

The Aeros play the Rampage in San Antonio on Saturday, then return to the Toyota Center for a late afternoon matchup with the Rockford IceHogs.

SOME MISCELLANEOUS GAME NOTES:

Kevin Constantine had lots to say about the team’s bad play after the game. Lots of stuff that can best be boiled down to the team just not being consistently able to bring every night and the players thinking they’re better than they actually are.

“For me,” Constantine said. “If you’ve been winning – and we’ve been winning – and you get a lead in the first, you just mentally get convinced that everything is going to work out no matter what you do. You stop working….We just quit working.”

But he wasn’t done.

“It’s a complacent by-product of winning, that’s where our heads were at during the game.”

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Corey Locke was disappointed in himself, and in his teammates, as well, after the game. “We need these two points more than [Quad City did],” he said. But he’s hoping Saturday’s game against San Antonio can help to erase the ill feelings left by this one. “That’s a good thing about this league. You just go back out at it.”

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The key to the game, for Quad City, was the removal of starting goalie Matt Keetley after his disastrous first period. While Nolan Schaefer wasn’t at the top of his game, Keetley didn’t even bring his. The Aeros first goal, at 1:12 of the first period, came when Benoit Pouliot bounced the puck off of Keetley. The second goal was on the power play 11:27 when an off-target Maxim Noreau slap shot from up top found a perfectly positioned Jesse Schultz just feet from Keetley, and Schultz deflected the shot past Keetley before Keetley could react. And the Aeros final goal of the game came out 19:59 when Morten Madsen got in front of a Brandon Rogers shot and back-handed it into the net.

Leland Irving came in for Quad City to start the second, and the Aeros, with the exception of the Love/Kassian duo, were rarely able to get off any good scoring chances. And as much as I like Mitch Love and Matt Kassian, if they’re giving the team the best chance to score, the team’s not getting the job on offense.

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There’s not really much more to say about this game. It just sucked. For no reason that I can think of, besides the fact that the word “Fire” is in the title, I thought that I would play us out with a little Billy Joel and “We Didn’t Start the Fire.”