Rochester Wins!

Last night, the Amerks snapped their losing streak and defeated the Houston Aeros, 3-2.

Coming in to the game, the Aeros were 7-4 and second in the West division, while Rochester was 1-10, last in the league.

The game was scoreless through two periods with Chris Beckford-Tseu stopping fourteen shots before the Amerks scored the first goal of the game 5 minutes into the third.

Stefan Meyer, who has missed half of the games already this season, scored his first goal of the year and it came on the power play. Thereafter, the score remained 1-0 until a couple minutes beyond the midway point of the period when Kenndal McArdle scored his third, extending his point streak to five games (2 goals, 3 assists). Twenty-four seconds later, Shawn Matthias took a pass from Mike Duco, skated in and put the puck past Nolan Schaefer, making it 3-0 Rochester.

The Aeros surged, scoring with just over two minutes to play and then again with less than thirty seconds on the clock, but it was too little too late and the Amerks held on to snap their losing streak and come away with a much deserved win.

Rochester is off tonight, but will be back in action Monday night when the Manitoba Moose return for the fourth matchup between the two teams so far (they play each other eight times).

As for the Panthers, they have extended their losing streak to six games.

Olli Jokinen scored a goal and added an assist while the Coyotes skated off with a 4-1 victory.

Florida actually opened the scoring when Richard Zedink chipped away at a puck in front of the net, which slowly slid under Ilya Bryzgalov and into the goal. But it was all Phoenix after that. The Panthers no longer sustained pressure and rather than start a game poorly and play better late, they started well and progressively got worse. Tonight, the Panthers wrap up the road trip in Anaheim.

Game time is 8PM.