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There’s no place like home: Americans regain winning touch at AEC
BY Kevin Hageland, khageland@acnpapers.com
After the first 18 games of the season, a stretch in which Allen had already completed two five-game road trips, Americans head coach and general manager Dwight Mullins said the standings were tough to judge.
“With the unbalanced schedule some teams have played a lot of home games while other teams, like us, have been on the road a lot,” he said. “It’ll be interesting to see what happens when that sort of balances out.”
Now that the balancing process has begun, Allen has to like what it sees.
Allen held the conference’s top spot for a day after throttling Wichita, 5-0, on Friday.
“I think this was our best game in a long time,” said Rejean Beauchemin, Americans goalie.
Despite the teams totaling just 11 shots in the first, Allen managed goals off the sticks of Jeff Martens and Nick Layton, both on assists by Mark Nebus, for a 2-0 lead.
Nebus scored a goal of his own in the second period and finished the evening with one goal and two assists. That line was replicated by Layton, who assisted on the Nebus goal. Also lighting the lamp for Allen on Friday was Bruce Graham, who scored to make it 3-0 in the second period and 5-0 in the third, which was also the final score.
The goals continued a torrid pace for Graham, who is tied for the league lead in scoring with 57 points. Graham is also second in the CHL with 25 goals and tied with teammate Jim McKenzie for third in plus/minus with a +17.
But Graham isn’t the only Allen player on a tear.
He is being matched on the other side of the ice by Beauchemin. The Americans goalie stopped all 20 shots he saw Friday, ensuring a 5-0 Allen victory and back-to-back shutouts for the first time in Beauchemin’s professional career.
“We haven’t seen these guys since early-December,” Beauchemin said, “so it was a long time coming and definitely a game we had circled on our calendar.”
Beauchemin, a former draft pick of the Philadelphia Flyers, has a 10-4-4 record this season, leads the league in goals against average (2.03), save percentage (.932) and was named Oakley CHL Goaltender of the Week.
“Rejean has been playing extremely well,” Mullins said. “He has been the key to us winning five of our last six games.”
Friday’s win pushed Allen ahead of Wichita for first place in the Berry Conference.
However, that position wouldn’t last long as the Americans lost to the Rio Grande Valley Killer Bees, 3-0, Saturday night in front of the largest home crowd of the season.
The 5,780 fans at the AEC saw Beauchemin’s scoreless streak end at 177 minutes when Dan Gendur buried a wrister in the first period. Rio Grande Valley would add goals from Aaron Boogard and Tomas Klempa in the second period to set the eventual final of 3-0.
Sunday’s rematch would feature another three-goal differential, but a decidedly different outcome as the Americans upended the Killer Bees, 4-1.
It took only six minutes for Allen to get on the board, as Martens lit the lamp, but that would be the only goal of the first 40 minutes.
The third period featured a more rapid-fire pace with four goals scored. And much to the enjoyment of the fans at the AEC, three of those four were scored by Allen. McKenzie netted his 15th goal of the season to make it 2-0. Rio Grande Valley fired back with a goal courtesy of Aaron Lee, but a timeout by Mullins recharged the Americans with two goals scored by Graham over the final eight minutes to wrap up a 4-1 victory.
Both of Graham’s goals were assisted by Jason Deitsch, who is third in the CHL with 33 helpers.
With the win, Allen improves to 24-10-7 (55 points). Wichita still leads the conference by one point with the Americans wrapping up their seven-game homestand Feb. 9 against the Thunder. Before that though, Allen has 7:05 p.m. home games Friday and Saturday against the Tulsa Oilers.
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