Providence 3, Houston 1

Scratches/Injured: Ryan Stokes, Peter Schaefer (neither are healthy)

Byron Bitz played but limited: he is suffering from the flu

First let me say, I'd love to hear more from those that were at the game!

Thanks Mikko Lehtonen for scoring the first goal! He's really been doing well lately. The period is just flying by... not sure what is happening, totally, but it sounds like the P-Bruins are playing as they have been this weekend.

Dang.. it would have been nice to have gotten out of the first period without a goal from Houston..

Hey new guy.. B. Hooton even gets a goal today. Good for him!! I was rather falling asleep in the second period. Thanks for waking me up! Congrats to him on his first professional goal!

For the third I finally realized that I can't hear the crowd noise very well.. that is not normal. Bummer since it helps make me feel like I'm at the home game.

Oh my gosh! Marchand gets pulled down and we get our THIRD penalty shot in three games!! Oh, they wanted to change goalies for Houston? Haha.. Now they waved off the penalty shot. Bummer. What a loser the ref is.... boo!!!

Well, they held on for the win. Great six point weekend!

1st Period

Scoring
Providence:
M. Lehtonen (10) (M. Karsums, B. Marchand) 4:53
J. Boychuk (9) (B. Marchand, M. Lehtonen) 13:15 PP

Houston:,
J. Schultz (8) (M. Rosa, T. Mojzis) 19:27

Penalties:
J. May Pro (slashing) 5:05, D. Smith Hou (hooking) 13:06, M. Love Hou (roughing) 14:54, N. Lukacevic Pro (boarding) 14:54, B. Marchand Pro (slashing) 16:23, R. Hamilton Hou (tripping) 19:59

2nd Period

Scoring
Providence:
B. Hooton (1) (W. Rabbit, J. Reich) 18:52

Penalties:
M. Karsums Pro (hooking) 12:00, P. Albers Hou (delay of game) 15:47, D. Irmen Hou (delay of game) 15:53


3rd Period

Scoring - No Scoring

Penalties:
W. Rabbit Pro (tripping) 14:36, M. Noreau Hou (hooking) 16:07

HOU Shots: 9 9 12 TOTAL: 30
PRO Shots: 10 10 6 TOTAL: 26

Power Play Conversion
Houston Aeros 0-4. Providence Bruins 1-5.

Goaltenders

Houston Aeros
Brust 8-6-3 Start: 1st 0:00 Min: 58:08 SV: 23 GA: 3 [L]

Providence Bruins
Rask 16-12-0 Start: 1st 0:00 Min: 59:59 SV: 29 GA: 1 [W]

Three Stars:
1. PRO - M. Lehtonen
2. PRO - J. Boychuk
3. PRO - B. Hooton


Start: 4:07 PM
End: 6:17 PM
Attendance: 4872
Referee: Chris Cozzan

Well, it starts off great with the Bruins skating like madmen and getting two goals. Houston looks and plays like one of the peewee teams in our intermissions. I say to myself "Wow, Houston is really out of it tonite". Then the weirdness happens. Houston gets a goal when one of our guys blows his assignment and leaves his guy all alone in the slot to take a nice feed from behind the net. Hey, it happens. But this is where it seems someone threw the power switch off for the Bruins. The second period, the Bruins turn into the peewee team too and neither team can even pass the puck. We have a 5-3 opportunity for almost a full 2 minutes and we couldn't even cycle the puck nevermind get any good shots off. It was soo strange.

One funny thing happened at the end of the second period. Houston's goalie, Brust is skating by the Bruins bench on his way to the visitors bench to go to the locker room. Most of the Bruins are there getting ready to exit, and Brust trips on Marchand's stick and goes down face first. Well, he gets up and is pissed. Six Houston players skate up behind him and the teams get together pushin and hurling F-Bombs. At this time, Rask is just getting to the bench and has to skate right by Brust who is standing at the Houston end of our bench. Well Brust starts yapping at Rask and they chat face to face. You can see Brust is HOT and Rask laughs in his face and skates through the crowd of players and down the runway. Very Funny!! I don't know if Marchand tripped Brust on purpose. He was facing away from the ice toward the crowd. Who knows? But I'm gonna ask him when I see him at the "Meet the Players Party" on the 20th.

Third period, more of the same dull play from both teams. Hootens goal was nice. Wacey takes a nice feed from Jeremy and skates up the left side board over the blueline and smacks a nice slapper at Brust who lets the puck rebound right into the slot where Hooten had beaten his defenscman. Bang, right in. Boychuk retrieves the puck for Hooten, its his first pro point.

Then, more weirdness. Houston's net is empty and Marchand gets around his defender right in front of the penalty box. The Houston guy blatantly hooks Marchands hands and Brad losses control of the puck. He would have gotten the shot off ( Note, he wasn't taken down) but the ref, who is standing 10 feet away blows his whistle, stopping play and points to the faceoff circle. COOL, another penalty shot. The puck is placed on the center ice faceoff dot. But wait, Houston goal is empty and the next few minutes ( which seemed like an hour) everyone is lookin at each other while the ref and linesmen get together to talk. The ref talks to the benches and the puck is relocated to the faceoff circle where the hooking penalty happened. So we get no goal ( which Marchand probably would have gotten had the whistle not been blown) and no penalty shot. Now everyone in the Dunk is scratching their heads and wondering what the heck just happened. Who knows??

Game ends and we get another home win. Rask played well but none of the saves were hard. Same for Brust. I'm glad Lehtonen got first star. He deserved it.

First, thanks so much for the great recap!

That is so amusing about Brust triping on Marchand's stick (or did he trip him? And I can just see Tuukka getting into it. Oh, what game was it (and what goalie.. I hate that my memory is gone ) that everyone on the ice was fighting and so the two goalies decided to join them? That was a scream!

That whole thing with Marchand and it not being a penalty shot after it was called one was so insane. Adam was even saying how crazy it was. First Houston tried to change goalies! Then the officials were talking about it (what's to talk about?) and then he's saying, "now there are just four Houston players on the ice.." and now it wasn't a penalty shot. Very odd, indeed.

Lehtonen is really impressing me a lot as well. So are a few other guys. As posted yesterday, it's been incredible how so many have stood up and contributed.

......the game your thinking of was when Jay Henderson got into a fight on the ice and decided to continue it in the hallway outside the lockerrooms. Both benches emptied to back each other up leaving Hannu Toivonen and, yup, Barry Brust alone on the ice. So they decided to fight. I remember Hannu getting the worse end of the deal there.

Yes, that is the one! I was pretty sure it was Hannu that was our goalie that figured (and how funny that the other was Brust) along with Brust that since everyone else was fighting.. "what the heck". LOL! Yeah.. I remember that fight with Jay in the hallway. Thanks for jogging my fibro-fog.

I couldn't figure out how Brust fell I wasn't paying attention. What cracked me up was Rask laughing at him, kind of like yeah whatever. Levi was also having a good laugh right before he went into the locker room. It was an all around good game. I really like when the team has a 6 pt weekend and it's a good weekend as far as their play.