Aeros v. Lake Erie Monsters - Game 15

The Aeros spent most of the week after a long 4-in-5 weekend in Cleveland going to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, skinny dipping in Lake Erie, taking pictures next to the big FREE sculpture, etc.

That is to say, they were nicely rested from the grueling weekend, Krys Kolanos was back, John Scott was playing forward, and everyone was feeling fine by the looks of things, as the Aeros put a 3-1 victory in the books and headed for home.

Well, everyone was feeling fine except Peter Olvecky and Paul Albers, both of whom have either upper or lower body injuries. None of your beezwax which.

Also this game was a homecoming for Mitch Love, who played for Lake Erie last season. He even got into a bit of a skirmish near the end with Chris Durno, former San Antonio Rampager. I didn't get to see it, so I'm going to assume Mitch won and Durno went home crying to mama.

Brust played an excellent game stopping 30 of 31 shots. And really, if there was any consistency to the officiating in the AHL, the one that got in wouldn't have been a goal because there was a LEM player literally INSIDE the net (along with Brust, whom he ran and took into the net with him) when the puck went in. Talk about goalie interference! You can go to AHLLive.com and see the highlights for free.

The goals came from Hamilton, who had a great feed from Locker and just tucked it in point blank on the poor goalie. Then Noreau had a classic Noreau goal firing a shot from the high slot on a power play. Then Rosa got another power play goal, banging in a Stoner rebound from the bottom of the circle and down on one knee. Rosa hasn't been impressing me lately, but that was a nice goal.

Aside from the two injured guys, Kassian was also scratched for this game.

And pardon me for a minute while I go off on a tangent:

I'll tell you what stood out to me most of all was the large crowd there at Quicken Loans Arena and the relentless and cheesy, but fun, in-game entertainment. The choices of music and video clips (the AHLLive feed was the jumbotron feed) and funny little things they did was pretty good. Even got under my skin a little and I wasn't even there! It looked like a really fun atmosphere for a hockey game and I'd love to see the Aeros perk things up a little and get a sense of humor.

I will give them credit for ditching the truly awful Cowboy Mouth song they were using to tease the game and replacing it with something not corny and even slightly badass. I still don't understand why they play Three Dog Night's "One is the Loneliest Number" for the other team's first goal. Shouldn't they play something to pump everyone up. A quick search on iTunes for "lucky" reveals a song of the same name from a band called Lucky Twice. Upbeat, mocking the other team saying their goal was lucky, what more can you ask for in an opponents' goal song?



I know I shouldn't complain because I haven't heard God Bless America even once this season, but I will anyway. The Lake Erie game just reminded me of how much more fun they could be having with these games at the Toyota Center.

/end tangent