Round 1, Game 3: Aeros vs. Peoria -- It Don't Come Easy

“I’m proud of our guys,” a tired Kevin Constantine said from his office. “It was a travel day from hell. I’ve never been part of that. Something that crazy travel wise, and still played a game. I couldn’t imagine a more adverse condition to put a team under than that. And the guys they hung there. I didn’t hear them complain or moan. They just kind of came to the rink and said let’s do this.”

What the Houston Aeros did was play one of their better games of the season, virtually shutting down the Peoria Rivermen offense for the second game in a row, and relying on the offensive artistry of Corey Locke and Krys Kolanos to get the 2-1 victory before a surprisingly big crowd of 4092 at Toyota Center on Saturday night.

The first period was quick and crisply skated as neither team showed signs of the travel fatigue that should have been overwhelming them, especially the Houston Aeros. And while the Aeros were attacking the offensive end and getting some nice scoring opportunities, neither team really appeared to be close to breaking through on the scoreboard.

Then Peoria’s Jonas Junland was sent to the box for interference at the 8:58 mark of the second period. Fifteen seconds later, Krys Kolanos found himself all alone near the blue line, a wide open swatch of ice available for him to fire the puck down. Which he did. Only he angled the puck a bit so that instead of heading directly toward the goal, where Manny Legace was moving into position to block the shot, the shot went to Legace’s side to this spot near the crease where the ice was open and Legace’s back was turned. And Corey Locke was just standing there and he got his stick on the puck and nicely directed it into the goal to put the Aeros up 1-0.

The Rivermen tied the score 1-1 at 3:10 of the third. But at 9:57, Peoria’s Julian Talbot was sent to the box for slashing. And at 10:02, Krys Kolanos found himself all alone up near the blue line with a wide open swatch of ice available for which to fire the puck down. And he did. And Legace turned to face the puck. And Corey Locke appeared in that same spot behind Legace. And the puck went to Locke and not Legace, and Locke put the puck in the goal. And just like that the score was 2-1.

“Never,” Corey Locke answered when asked if he and Kolanos had ever practiced that play. “It’s just going to the net and his throwing pucks on it. I got lucky tonight.”

Corey Locke may want to call it lucky. But it looked more like precision. More like two highly-skilled offensive players seeing the easiest path to getting the puck in the net, then those two highly-skilled offensive players executing the play on bad ice and while jet lagged and fatigued.

And just as suddenly as the Aeros were able to score two goals on two power plays they were able to assume command, and the 2-1 series lead, of a playoff series in which they’re playing against one of the hottest teams in the AHL.

“We’ve had a pretty brutal schedule [this season],” Locke said. “I hate to say it, but we might have been used to this stuff a little bit more. We knew that we had to come and do a job no matter what happened, and that’s what we did tonight.”

The Aeros will get to use Sunday for some much needed rest and sleep. But now that they’ve got the momentum, let’s hope that a day off for sleep and rest doesn’t have a negative effect. Then again, maybe if the guys just let Locke and Kolanos play pitch and catch with the puck it won’t matter.

SOME MISCELLANEOUS GAME NOTES:

Anton Khudobin had a rough end to the season, especially as he was just seemingly thrown out onto the ice due to the injuries to Barry Brust and Nolan Schaefer. And while some of the bad play was clearly attributable to Khudobin – witness his problems with rebounds – Brandon Rogers took the blame at the end of the season as he said that the defense had let Khudobin and the team down.

But after getting beat up against Peoria in Game One, Khudobin has been nearly perfect. The defense has clearly played better in front of him – finally, it appears, stepping up to the situation. But Khudobin definitely deserves the praise for not letting Game One destroy him mentally.

“He’s been playing great,” Corey Locke said. “Even game one it was a just a tough couple of breaks for him. He’s doing a great job and we’re just trying to clear the ice from in front of the net. We know they’re going to send guys there. They want to get pucks into the net all of the time, and bodies. They’re going to keep throwing it at him.”

“We thought he finished with a good game in the regular season against San Antonio,” Kevin Constantine said. “And in game one of the playoffs we really had a bad start. The shots were like 13-1. So we wanted to kind of reserve judgment. And then he’s had two good games, so he’s put three and four really good games together.”

And with neither Nolan Schaefer nor Barry Brust being close to returning to action, it appears that Khudobin has picked the best part of the season to get his goalie legs under him.

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The Aeros won Game Three due to some offensive mastery from Krys Kolanos and Corey Locke. We’ve grown accustomed to this kind of mastery this season as Locke was the team’s leading scorer and Kolanos led the team in goals scored.

Through this postseason, the Aeros have scored eight goals. Krys Kolanos has one goal and three assists. Corey Locke has three goals and an assist. That is another good example of stepping up one’s play when everything is on the line.

Another key offensive asset for the Aeros in this series has been Peter Olvecky who arrived back from his stay with the Wild in time for the Game One loss. Olvecky has two points in the series, a goal and an assist in Game Two. And seeing as how the team only scored two goals in Game Two, his contribution is rather obvious.

However, as was mentioned in a couple of post below, Olvecky has played his last game for the Aeros this season. The NHL rules state that if a player’s NHL season is over, then the first priority is the World Championship if he’s invited to play. And Olvecky was invited to play, so he will be leaving the team.

“He’s been great for us,” Constantine said. “He’s been a big, big plus. But it’s no different than today’s travel. This team’s gone through a lot this year….we’ve been through stuff like this all year.”

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During the delay, while waiting for the Aeros to arrive at Toyota Center, Fred Trask and myself sat in the press dining room chatting with ourselves and with some of the officials who were already at the game – some, but not all, as it appears that two of the officials were on a plane with the Aeros as they didn’t arrive until the same time as the Aeros.

At one point, Fred said he wondered if all of the team’s three-in-three’s, day of travel, and standard airport and weather delays they’ve suffered through this season might work to their advantage. Like all of that – and Constantine said afterwards that this was the 11th time this season the team played on a travel day – was just preparation for this game against the Rivermen.

Unconfirmed rumor has it that this was the first time this season that the Rivermen have a played a game on the same day that they had to fly to another city – we asked Constantine, but he didn’t know. But for the Aeros, this was, in many ways, familiar territory. Sure, they’ve never had to delay a game for an hour because the team hadn’t arrived at the airport yet, but these guys are pretty used to hitting the rink and playing after being on an airplane all day.

And the Aeros initially wanted this game played on Sunday, but the AHL wanted it played on Saturday, so even with the travel difficulties, there was no thought given to postponing this game until Sunday.

“Once you’ve got people coming and you’ve paid for the building, I mean it’s really rare that anybody’s ever going to postpone,” Constantine said. “Most of the time they play at all cost. We were shooting for Sunday, but the league has a lot to do with playoffs and scheduling and stuff. And the schedule is what it is, and the travel is what it is, and the weather is what it is, so all we can do is show up and do our best and fortunately it was good enough.”

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I was rather impressed by the crowd for the game. The announced attendance was 4092. And it looked to be a bit smaller, but not much. Still, considering that weather was so bad that the city actually issued warnings requesting that nobody travel, and considering that the Aeros didn’t know until Thursday that they would be playing on Saturday, I say nice job to everybody that made it out to the game.

Now that said, what say we get an actual crowd out for Monday’s Game Four? This team never draws for weekday games, and the attendance for last year’s playoff games with Rockford was pitiful. I know that many of you have to work the next morning, but that doesn’t stop 30,000 from showing up at Minute Maid Park to watch the Astros lose. So how about it? Let’s get some people out to Toyota Center on Monday night.

Also, I think the Aeros need to do a little bit better job of announcing things regarding these games. I know that, at one point, a mass e-mail was supposedly sent to people on the Aeros e-mail list stating that the start of the game would be delayed because of the Aeros problems with getting to Houston. But I heard from several people who are on this list and who said that they did not get this notice, and only knew of the delay from The Third Intermission.

The Aeros should have posted something on their website, but unless you happened to look over at the scoreboard, you would not have seen anything as there was nothing posted under news. At least the Aeros did go ahead and open the doors at 6:30 as scheduled, but I just think that more could have been done.

And on the a side note, while I was thrilled to be able to tell a couple of the Lady Dynamics that the game time was actually moved to 8:25 from the original 7:35, they really should have been informed by the team.

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Finally, I can’t thing of any song more fitting to play us out on tonight that Ringo Starr with “It Don’t Come Easy.” Getting to this game wasn’t easy. Playing the game wasn’t easy. And getting the win wasn’t easy. So until Monday night, here’s Ringo.