Houston Hotdish: The Wheels on the Bus

We stood on the dock early last week and waved our tear-stained hankies at the Aeros as they took off for over a month of away games.

Since then, a lot has changed so let's start this one off after the jump by taking a look at the turmoil in the Aeros' roster lately:

In no particular order:

All that in 2 weeks, which included a 3 game home stand before embarking on this 11 day road trip, which sees them flying to Vancouver today, then busing to Abbotsford for a couple of games.

So, yeah, that's just a little bit of roster chaos the Aeros have been facing. And yet they're playing okay... "hanging in there" like the cat on a limb in that poster... despite the 3-0 blanking they got in Milwaukee last night. Our mid-west correspondent, Chris Jerina, said the score didn't reflect the quality of the Aeros play. They just couldn't get the chances into the net (sound familiar?) and one of those goals against was an empty net.

So far, they're 2-2 on this road trip, with two close losses and two 5 goal games to win, so that's not a bad result despite the adversity.

Goaltending

They should just sign me to a PTO and let me sit on the bench behind Hackett while Kuemper goes back to Ontario to actually play hockey. Just pray Hack doesn't get hurt.

Standings

Currently the Aeros are 7 points behind the first place OKC Barons and 6 points ahead of the suddenly-good San Antonio Rampage. They're spending the weekend with Abbotsford, who are in 4th, just one point behind San Antonio.

The Aeros are playing Abby IN Abby four times in the next few weeks, and the Heat are weakened by call-ups and injuries, so that's a real chance to make some hay in the division.

Still 3 more weeks and some change before we even see them again, and for that matter, we may not even recognize them when they get back.