At 7:19 P.M on Friday, January 22nd the puck dropped at the Alaska Aces hockey game at the Sullivan Arena in downtown Anchorage. The face-off between the Aces and the Idaho Steelheads ended with a Steelhead victory 2-0. 

The beginning of the game started out rough for the Aces. Rob Murray, the head coach for the team, said, “I didn’t like the way we started the game.” With only 13:25 minutes into the first period, Idaho scored their first goal. The period ended with the Aces having seven shots on goal, and the Steelheads with six.

The second period was fairly uneventful. Other than a few penalties for both teams, nothing really happened. The highlight of the second period however, was the small fight between the two teams that broke out with only 12.3 seconds left in the period, resulting in two minute penalties for the both of the two players that engaged in the fight.

The game continued with the same pace in the third period like it had throughout the rest of the game. As the Steelheads scored their second and final goal of the night just minutes before the end of the third period, the notion of defeat was emanate throughout the 4,622 people in attendance.

With only 4:36 left in the game, an unexpected shot on the ice sent the puck flying into the air and into the crowd of people on the dry side, and luckily no one was hurt.

With an overall score of 2-0, the Alaska Aces lost to the Idaho Steelheads. Kurt Haider, the radio play-by-play announcer for the Aces was let down by his team’s loss, and said, “not quite the confidence,” when talking about the way they played.

Ronnie Tessier, a sophomore at Service High school said, “They never got a score, but you know you could tell they tried very hard to win the game tonight.” Tessier seemed to overall enjoy the game, “My favorite part was when the Aces goalie blocked a really powerful slap shot towards their goal. I thought that was very impressive.”

The week after the the game on January 22nd, the Aces travelled to Colorado to play the Colorado Eagles. February will be a very busy month for the team. For the first week of February the team will have three away games against Steelheads again, before coming back to Anchorage to play the Allen Americans the next week. The following week they will travel to South Dakota to face off against Rapid City Rush. The Aces will spend the last week of the month in Colorado to play the Colorado Eagles a second time.