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Syracuse Crunch

Crunch Earn Point in OT Loss to Houston

January 26, 2011 - American Hockey League (AHL)
Syracuse Crunch News Release


Syracuse, NY (January 26, 2011) - The Syracuse Crunch exploded with three second period goals, but could not hold off the visiting Houston Aeros tonight, falling by a 4-3 score in overtime at The Oncenter War Memorial Arena.

Houston's Robbie Earl scored twice for his club, including on a one-timer from the right side on the power play 1:43 into the extra session for the game-winner.

Nate Guenin scored his first goal as a member of the Crunch and Kyle Palmieri and Patrick Maroon each added their 11th tallies of the season in the losing effort.

The Crunch looked to feed off their effort from last Saturday's 3-2 win over Norfolk, but Houston drew first blood and went up 1-0 just 26 seconds into the game when Warren Peters found Colton Gillies with a back-door pass and Gillies deposited the disk into the open net past J.P. Levasseur to give his club the early lead.

Houston controlled most of the action over the next five minutes, but the Crunch started to even things out once they got their legs under them.

Although the Crunch's effort improved as the period went on, Houston took a 2-0 lead at the 17:35 mark when Chad Rau fed Earl at the side of the cage and the Aeros leading scorer made no mistake, planting a shot over the shoulder of Levasseur. Houston outshot the Crunch by a 12-9 margin in the game's first 20 minutes.

The Crunch kept coming at the start of the second period and it paid off despite being down a man when John de Gray was called for hooking 2:49 in.

The play started when Josh Green took his man to the boards in the Crunch's defensive zone, pressuring him into an errant pass that was picked up by Nick Bonino. Bonino skated the puck down the ice into the offensive zone and fed Guenin trailing on the right side. Guenin snapped a wrister over Anton Khudobin to cut Syracuse's deficit to 2-1 just 3:40 into the second stanza.

That goal sparked the Crunch even more and they eventually tied the contest at 2-2 10 minutes later when Matt Beleskey slid a pass through the crease that Palmieri chipped past Khudobin.

Just 40 seconds later, the Crunch took their first lead of the game when Maroon found a loose puck in the slot and swatted a backhand that found its way past Khudobin to put the home team up 3-2 through two periods of play.

Houston came out strong in the third period, peppering Levasseur with 19 shots on goal and holding the Crunch to just four bids.

The Aeros tied the game at 3-3 just 3:45 into the final period of regulation when Jon DiSalvatore capitalized on a Crunch defensive zone turnover and beat Levasseur with a slap shot low to the glove side.

The score stayed that way through regulation, with the Crunch PK unit doing a nice job of killing off back-to-back infractions with about six minutes left that included 1:17 of 5-on-3 time for Houston.

Unfortunately, the Aeros were given their third straight power play when Joe DiPenta was called for cross-checking with just four seconds left.

That power play carried over to the extra session and Earl scored with just 13 seconds remaining in the penalty to earn Houston the extra point.

CRUNCHABLES: Prior to tonight's game, Anaheim assigned forwards Matt Beleskey and Dan Sexton to the Crunch and reassigned goaltender Marco Cousineau from Syracuse to Elmira (ECHL).Patrick Maroon has seven points (3g, 4a) over his last nine games.Josh Green's assist tonight was the 200th point of his AHL career.With his two points (1g, 1a) tonight, Kyle Palmieri broke out of a four-game scoreless streak.

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