View from the Pressbox: Aeros fall short on opening night.

If you were at Toyota Center on Saturday night, surely you noticed that big, black ugly curtain covering the new scoreboard over center ice.

It's not quite ready yet, and the Rockets are going to debut that baby in a few weeks. After they do, Aeros fans are going to love that. There are even going to be a few of you who will sit at the bar in the club level, drink and watch the game on that baby.

OK, so who am I kidding ... ?

That curtain might as well have been covering up the real Aeros, too. These guys have skill, and they are just going to have to learn to play at this level and with others that have the same kind of talent. The first period was a typical opening night period.

But Charlotte is mostly intact from a year ago, and they fed off a chemistry that the Aeros don't yet have. It is going to take a few weeks for all of that to come together, and when it does, you are going to see things at Toyota Center with a hockey puck that you have not seen since Westrum, Law and O'Sullivan.

Matt Hackett was solid, and really the only truly disappointing thing to me was the power(less) play. It was atrocious.

They were great getting the puck down the ice, and then BOOM disaster between the circles.

Charlotte knew what the Aeros were doing, and they stopped it. And when the Aeros did get something going they turned the puck over.

Congrats to Brodin, who gets the Aeros first goal of the season. It will probably be Game No. 2 tomorrow before they get their first real goal. Brodin's shot went off a Charlotte defenseman and into the net.

Have to give Rau a little stick tap, too, for keeping with that and causing a little trouble over there.

That is all from Toyota Center tonight. I do with the more than 8,000 fans could have gone home a little happier. We'll see how it all works out next week when Texas pays a visit.

What were your thoughts on the game?