The Aeros pulled off a minor upset, defeating the Milwaukee Admirals 2-1 on Thursday night to win the first game of a best-of-seven series. And though they lost 4-1 on Saturday to Milwaukee, with the series retuning to Houston for three games this week, it’s the Aeros who have the home-ice advantage.

But for that to happen, the Aeros are going to have to play a better game than they did on Saturday. The team on Saturday looked tired, looked slow, and made way too many stupid mistakes. Head coach Kevin Constantine was happy with the Game One win, but he wasn’t pleased with the team’s effort on Saturday. He felt the things the team wants to be good at, they weren’t good at on Saturday, and that they spent more time reacting to Milwaukee than they did going on the attack.  

One thing the team is dealing with, and has been dealing with for much of the last couple of months, is injuries. Third-string goalie Anton Khudobin, who spent most of this season playing in the ECHL, has been between the pipes pretty much every game for the last couple weeks of the season and the playoffs. And while his play has improved, he’s still dependent on the team playing good hockey in front of him.

The team’s number one goalie, Nolan Schaefer, was thought to be close
to returning to action as team doctors had originally thought he would
be healthy enough to play in the last games of the regular season. But
it now looks as if his lower body injury is worse than thought, and he
might well be out for the rest of however long the Aeros playoff run
lasts. And Schaefer’s back-up, Barry Brust, has been out of action with
a broken foot. It’s thought that he’s also out for the length of the
team’s playoff appearance, but Constantine said Brust would be able to
play before Schaefer.

Right wing Jesse Schultz, the team’s
third-leading scorer, and one of the keys to the team’s offense, hurt
his ankle in Game Six against Peoria, and a return to action while
still playing against Milwaukee is also very doubtful.  

Game
Three is tonight at 7:05 at Toyota Center. Game Four is
Thursday at Toyota Center, and will start at 7:05. Game Five is
Saturday night, and it will start at 7:35.

This article appears in Apr 30 – May 6, 2009.

John Royal is a native Houstonian who graduated from the University of Houston and South Texas College of Law. In his day job he is a complex litigation attorney. In his night job he writes about Houston...