The Houston Aeros are consistent about two things this season. They’ve played six games this season. All six games have been on the weekend. The Aeros have won three of those games, and they’ve lost three of those games. They’re also consistent about the fact that when it comes to the second period of games, the Aeros are better off just skipping the action.
The Aeros won Friday night’s contest with the San Antonio Rampage 5-2, but not before struggling through a second period that saw the team surrender an early 1-0 lead and fall behind 2-1 before the San Antonio goalie lost his composure and proceeded to help cost his team the game with two penalties in a matter of minutes that led to a game-tying goal.
The Aeros lost 5-1 to the Texas Stars on Saturday as they gave up four goals in the second period to fall hopelessly behind 4-0. Aeros coach Kevin Constantine switched out his goalies in the middle of the game, and even went so far as to pull his goalie with over seven minutes left in the game on Saturday in hopes of generating some kind of intensity. Hopes which were in vain.
Last year’s team was known for being consistently inconsistent. That
team struggled throughout the entire season and only managed to squeak
into the playoffs on the final weekend of the season. Last season’s
team, however, generally fell behind in the first period, then fought
the good fight to come from behind and get the win in the third period.
This year’s team has been putting together good first periods, but
can’t seem to show up for the second period.
And this is
something that is troubling Constantine as he and his staff struggle
with ways to get the team’s second-period intensity on par with that of the first period.
“I think you’re right overall,”
Constantine said after Saturday’s loss when asked about the second-period problems. “If you looked at an issue for our team, it is our
inability to go into the locker room and come back out with the same
energy we finished the period with.”
In many ways, the problems
that the team are experiencing can probably be attributed to the
massive roster turnover. The staff and the players still appear to be
learning each other, and Constantine is still playing mix-and-match
with his lines as he looks for the ones with the best chemistry. One
line which he appears to have settled on is one that first appeared in
game four, and it features rookies Carson McMillan and Cody Almond
teamed up with veteran center Peter Zingoni. This has been the team’s
most consistent line, and it also appears to be the one line that
doesn’t have problems with intensity, no matter which period the team’s
playing.
The team is still unsettled on its primary goalie.
Barry Brust, the nominal number-one goalie, has yet to play because of
a foot problem he first experienced last season. The team’s most
consistent goalie has been Anton Khudobin, who established himself in
the playoffs last season when filling in for the injured Brust and the
departed Nolan Schaefer.
But Khudobin still appears to rattle if he
lets in a bad goal, or if the play in front of him is not up to
standard — he also appears to have massively improved confidence wise
from last season, however.
And veteran Wade Dubielewicz was acquired during the off-season with
some thoughts that he might be the primary backup in Minnesota.
However, he has not looked good in his game action this season.
After
Friday’s game, which was started and won by Khudobin, Constantine
weighed in on the situation: “We started out the year and gave the
benefit of the doubt to Dubielewicz just as an older goalie. They both
got two games each the first weekends. Once you kind of get through
that, there’s got to be a performance factor in your decision making,
and Anton had just won the first two games. We just decided that we’ve
been real fair up to now, and gave everybody a chance, and now we have
to factor in that Anton won and he deserved the right to play this
game. And we just make decisions game at a time after that.”
But
when given his chance as the number-one goalie on Saturday night,
Khudobin looked bad and threw the situation back into doubt.
The
3-3-0-0 Aeros are in fourth place in the West Division, and they return
to action tomorrow night as they take on the Lake Erie Monsters at
Toyota Center at 7:05. The team will then play most of the rest of this
month on the road, including two games in San Antonio this weekend.
This article appears in Oct 15-21, 2009.
