BINGHAMTON, NY – The Binghamton Senators triumphed over the Houston Aeros in a lopsided 3-0 whitewashing to tie the Calder Cup finals at two wins apiece. After his team fell short in game three, Binghamton Senators coach Kurt Kleinendorst said he thought he had a few tricks up his sleeve for game four. Shaking up lines and fine-tuning systems in Thursdays practice seemed to pay off, as the Senators charged out of the gate, doubling up shots on Houston and scoring twice in the first period. “We’re just trying to throw more pucks on net, trying to test (goalie Matt) Hackett a little bit. We haven’t tested him until tonight,” said Senators center Cody Bass. “I think they were kind of a little shocked at how we came out tonight in the first period.” Test Hackett they did, to the tune of 18 shots in the first period. “Right from the get-go, you could tell they were ready to go,” said Aeros coach Mike Yeo. “When you’re in the game physically and engaged like that, like they were tonight, then you could see their execution was crisp, the passes they were making, they were on the ball.” Colin Greening got Binghamton on the board midway through the first as a relatively harmless wrap-around shot skirted around goalie Matt Hackett’s pad and sneaked between his pads. A series of penalties by the Aeros dug the hole even deeper, as the Senators converted on a 5-on-3 chance to go up 2-0. A pass across the doorstep found Corey Locke’s stick and he roofed the puck as Hackett made a desperate dive across the crease. The Aeros gathered a bit of focus in the second, putting up 8 shots to Binghamton’s 9 in spite of having to kill off a four minute high sticking penalty. “There’s some where we saw our game kind of getting there,” said Yeo, but added that it’s tough to come out not ready, have a poor first period, and then flip a switch and suddenly play well. “I don’t think that we had full contributions from everybody tonight,” Yeo added. “We had a lot of guys that had below average games, and if you have one guy that has a below average game right now, the odds of you winning the game have just gone down by quite a bit.” And indeed, the Senators kept coming in third and put the final nail in the coffin with a goal at 2:19 by Derek Smith to go up 3-0. Locke earned the assist on the goal, a laser that beat Hackett glove side, for his second point of the night. Robin Lehner earned his third shutout of the playoffs, stopping 21 shots en route, but credited his team with the blanking. “There wasn’t very much to do at times. It was kind of in intervals. I think we played really good defensively today; I didn’t feel I had that big a part of the shutout today,” the 19-year-old rookie goalie said. Yeo said there was almost nothing the Aeros did better than the Senators in the game. “I think they did some things and made some adjustments certainly that had an impact, but I think more than anything they had a game 7 approach to the game and we didn’t.” The teams meet again for game five Saturday night, and the Aeros, while having been a good bounce-back team, have struggled in back-to-back games during the playoffs. Yeo said fatigue might be a factor in game five, but added that the team might have saved some energy with their lackluster performance tonight. “This time of the year, I don’t know, the adrenaline’s got to kick in. I’m already excited for the game tomorrow,” he said. “I had my moment where I went in (the locker room) and slammed a couple of things, but even as I sit here right now it‘s, what an opportunity. We’ve got the best of three for the Calder Cup.”
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