WINNIPEG, Man – The clock finally struck midnight on the Houston Aeros’ unbelievable Cinderella playoff run Monday night with a 3-1 loss to the Manitoba Moose. The Moose won the series 4-2 to become the Western Conference Champions and will face the Hershey Bears for the Calder Cup starting Saturday. Without a doubt, the Aeros can go into the off-season with heads held high. The team endured and overcame remarkable adversity, both during the regular season and playoffs. In doing so, they seemed to learn some necessary lessons that carried into the post season to extend their run beyond anybody’s expectations.
In their final game of the season, however, the Aeros came out flat and the offense never gelled. On a night when energy was what the team seemed to need the most, the absence of energy line players Mitch Love and Matt Kassian was evident in the Aeros’ 17 shots to
The Aeros did get on the board first with a power play goal at 12:52 in the opening frame. Krys Kolanos forced
With the goal, Locke became the Aeros all-time leading playoff points-getter and broke his own playoff scoring record with 23 points (12 goals, 11 assists).
Celebrations wouldn’t last long, however, as less than two minutes later, Matt Pope launched a shot high glove side to beat Aeros goalie Matt Climie and tie the game up.
The second period was a back-and-forth battle by both teams and no goals were scored. But in the third, it took just one penalty call (the only one all period), to give
At 9:46 in the third, while Aeros defenseman Clayton Stoner was off for high-sticking, Michael Grabner beat a screened Climie with a short-side shot from the top of the circle.
Moose defenseman Mark Fistric potted the insurance goal with help from Cody Hodgson, and from there, the Aeros looked like they had finally run out of steam, and Manitoba was back to their dominant style with the help of over 9,000 fans in the building.
If any team ever seemed poised to pull off the miraculous feat of coming back from a 3-0 deficit in the Calder Cup playoffs, it was this resilient
Meanwhile, expect the Aeros to have quite a different look next season, with many of their top players looking at free agency this summer and plenty of management changes with the parent club Minnesota Wild that may trickle down to the farm team in
Contact heather.galindo@prohockeynewsc.om Catch all the playoffs at Intotheboards.net
