Considering how badly the season has gone, it wasn’t until the 27th game of the season that the Amerks were shut out for the first time. 

They lost to the Peoria Rivermen (currently in second place in the Western Conference) on Friday night, by the final score of 2-0.  The Amerks sabotaged an excellent game from goaltender Mike Brodeur.

This was the Amerks fifth game in seven nights for both teams. The key difference appears to have been the Amerks not being able to overcome a full day of travel on Thursday.

Talking about the schedule, coach Benoit Groulx stated, “It's not an excuse but a fact we’ve been traveling a lot lately.  We should have been able to overcome this.  I expected them to have a bad first and then pick it up, but it's not the case which is too bad because we sabotaged a great game from Brodeur. 

"We got a little better but had nothing in the system.  Looking at the schedule we knew tonight was going to be a tough night and it's part of a schedule, we’re all facing this and you’ve got to find a way to overcome this and I am disappointed that we couldn’t find a way tonight.”

Mike Brodeur was the star of the game for the Amerks. He received possibly the largest cheers from any Amerk home crowd this season, with amazing saves every chance he had.  He finished the game with 27 saves, many of them worthy of a highlight film.

“He was fantastic,” commented Groulx.  Speaking of Brodeur he continued to say, “Without him this game would’ve been very painful.  Obviously we had nothing tonight in the system.  Really sluggish right off the start and could not turn things around.”

“I’m feeling it right now, the puck just seems to hit me and feels good,” commented Brodeur.

Brodeur has quickly become the No. 1 star of this team amongst fans, and he feeds off of that.  “It’s fun when the fan gets into the game, they make us play better and stronger.  It’s what we need right now,” he said.

Unfortunately he seemed to be the only one feeding off of the fans.  The team only had two shots in the first period, six in the second, and nine in the third.  The Amerks also had four power play chances but were not able to even come close to scoring on any.

The game was scoreless until 6:02 of the third when Tyson Strachan was finally able to beat Brodeur.  The Rivermen had great puck movement and after 25+ shots at Brodeur they finally found a way to beat him.

Even though the game was scoreless after two periods of play, the game wasn’t even close.  The Rivermen were getting the puck moved around, getting shots through to the goaltender, and simply put, they seemed to have a system and were able to execute.

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