Milwaukee falls flat on home ice again

Team drops third straight at Arena

Having played the fewest home games — 15 — in the American Hockey League so far, the Milwaukee Admirals began a stretch Tuesday of playing 23 of their final 36 contests at the UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena.

That might not be a good thing the way the team is playing here lately.

The Cleveland Monsters defeated Milwaukee, 5-2, as the Admirals have lost their last three home games by a combined score of 13-3.

“I don’t care where we played tonight, we weren’t going to win that hockey game,” Admirals coach Dean Evason said. “Not the way we played. Four of the five goals were absolutely given to them. … Our key tonight was to play defense and let that translate to offense, and I don’t think we did.”

Despite playing in Milwaukee for just the sixth time in its last 18 games, the Admirals were coming off a 3-1 road trip and trailed only two teams in the Western Conference for most wins with 23.

But the only loss of the recent trip, a 5-1 decision at Chicago, came Sunday and seemed to have a carry-over effect against Cleveland.

The Monsters, who won for just the third time in their last eight games and were 1-3 against Milwaukee this season, scored the first two goals. They added two more in the final 2 minutes of the second period shortly after Pontus Aberg scored the first of his two goals for the Admirals.

Admirals goalie Marek Mazanec — playing in his seventh straight game — was replaced with backup Jonas Gunnarsson at the start of the third but it was not because of his play.

“No, good God no,” Evason said. “I apologized to ‘Maz’ in between the second and the third and told him I’m apologizing for the team. Because I’m part of the team, and I apologized for the effort that was put in front of him. (Being replaced) had no bearing on him. … There’s no reason to leave ‘Maz’ in there when the group in front of him played like that.”

The move rejuvenated Milwaukee, as it took just 31 seconds in the final period for Aberg to score his team-high 12th goal on a shot from the high slot past goalie Anton Forsberg to trim the deficit to 4-2.

But just like his first goal, the momentum did not last long.

Cleveland, playing for the first time in Milwaukee this year, regained its three-goal lead when Jordan Maletta scored 7-plus minutes later.

The Admirals still have nine of their next 11 games at home, and Evason plans to use that to his advantage.

“No question, we haven’t had a lot of practice time,” he said. “It’ll be nice to have a day that we can really practice. And practice hard.”