Round 3, Game #3: Aeros vs. Manitoba: So Close, Yet So Far Away

“I don’t have any excuses for it,” Nolan Schaefer said of Michael Grabner’s game-winning goal. “He’s a good player. It’s a good shot. I just have to make the save the next time.”

While offering that Grabner fanned on the shot, that the puck just kind of wobbled, and that it bounced off of the post, Schaefer made it clear that he still should have stopped the shot and led the team into overtime. But as has been the case with the Aeros so often this season, overtime was so close, yet still so far away as the team lost 4-3 to the Manitoba Moose before a Toyota Center crowd of 2634.

Now Manitoba holds the three games to zero lead in this best of seven series, and the Aeros are just one game away from the end of the season.

Schaefer, who started for the first time since the end of March, took the blame for the loss. “When it came down to it, we just gave up too many opportunities and I didn’t make the big saves at the right time.”

The game’s first goal came when Manitoba’s Mike Keane got his stick on a shot from Mike Bliznak and tipped the puck past Schaefer for the 1-0 lead at the 13:47 of the first period. Then with the Aeros on the power play, Manitoba got a short handed goal from Alexandre Bolduc at 2:33 of the second period. And in a bit of karma, Matt Beaudoin deflected a Krys Kolanos shot into the goal to make the score 2-1 at the 12:29 mark of the second. But with momentum possibly shifting in Houston’s favor, Michael Grabner scored his first goal of the night to make it 3-1 at 14:08.

The third period found the Aeros playing their most inspired hockey of the series. But it was a case of too little, too late. Marco Rosa fed a great pass to Corey Locke at 1:11 of the third, and Locke put the puck past Manitoba’s Corey Schneider to make the score 3-2. Matt Beaudoin then found himself in excellent position several times over the next several minutes, but he couldn’t convert his scoring chances into actual points. Danny Irmen tied the score at three-all when he got the short-handed goal at 6:30 of the third. For the next ten minutes, the Aeros did everything possible to grab the lead. Except for, that is, actually scoring a goal. And by the time Grabner made his game-winning goal at 16:11, the Aeros just appeared to run out of gas.

“I thought we played pretty hard. I wasn’t displeased with our effort,” head coach Kevin Constantine said following the game. “They were better than us tonight by a goal.”

So close, yet so far away. And isn’t it that, in many ways, the perfect definition of this Aeros’ season. So close. Yet so far. Does the season end on Wednesday night, or do the Aeros find a way to extend this series to a Game Five? Well that’s a question we’re not going to get answered until that time. But the prognosis appears to be negative.

SOME MISCELLANEOUS GAME NOTES:

It can be argued that Manitoba won the game at the 13:47 mark of the first period when the Moose scored the game’s first goal. In this postseason, the Aeros are now 1-7 when the opponent scores first, and they are 0-8 when trailing after the first period.

“It [first goal]only sets the tone if you let it,” Nolan Schaefer said. “We’ve been getting down after a goal, and it’s how you respond to the goal that matters. We set our own tone out there so we just have to be ready for adversity.”

With the season on the line, it was probably hoped the team would play the entire game like they did the third period, but as has been the case all season, the team kicked into a different gear when the third period started.

“I don’t know if we were at our best the first two periods,” Schaefer said, “but I don’t think we played a bad game either. They didn’t get a lot of shots. It’s just that the opportunities they did get were Grade-A/A-plus chances.”

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The goalie switch was not so much about the play of Anton Khudobin as it was Kevin Constantine trying to change the momentum of the series, and of the Aeros, who have now lost five of their last six games.

“We had only won one of our last five games so we decided to give Nolan a shot,” Constantine said.

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During the game, for some reason, the game day crew was showing clips from the later sequels to the Rocky movies. But seriously, seeing as how all of those movies suck, and suck really hard, was it really too much to ask that they trot out clips from the original? The original, after all, was actually a good movie. And though Rocky lost in the original, it was a great underdog movie about a man going the distance against a contender who should have knocked Rocky out early in the first round. So if there’s any movie which really fits into the spirit of these Aeros, it’s that first Rocky.