The Aberdeen Wings were unable to secure a win at home and now will open the playoffs on the road.

The Wings lost to Austin 2-1 at the Odde Ice Center Friday night and lost home ice-advantage for their upcoming post-season series. The two teams had entered their weekend series with identical records. Austin owned the tiebreaker between the two and clinched home-ice with its regulation victory.

Aberdeen had its chances against the Bruins, outshooting the visitors 37-23. However, all but one of those attempts came up empty.

“We hit a post and simple things like that, and then as we start to get a little bit more selective, we make it a little bit harder,” said Wings coach Steve Jennings. “Instead of continuing with what was simply working for us, we tried to up our complexity and that hurts us.”

The Wings got off to a slow start and didn’t manage their first shot on goal until seven minutes into the contest.

By contrast, Austin scored just over a minute into the game and never trailed on the night.

Aberdeen started attacking the Bruins goal and tied the game when Landry Schmuck got behind the Austin defense about midway through the second period.

However, Austin took the lead for good about four minutes later on the second goal of the game by Anthony Menghini.

The Wings had numerous scoring opportunities, including a two-man advantage early in the second period and other power-play chances.

Aberdeen was unable to cash in and has now lost four straight games, three of them to the Bruins.

“That’s the whole thing,” Jennings said. “That’s what we talked about all week, kind of not getting into this situation here, but we put our backs against the wall and now we have to compete.”

Wings goalie Anton Castro was solid throughout the contest, stopping 21 shots, including a breakaway late to keep it a one-score game.

“He’s committed (Boston University) for a reason. He’s a good goalie. That’s why he’s here,” Jennings said. “He kept us going. He’s a high-compete guy and that’s why we love him.”

While home-ice advantage is no longer at stake, tonight’s regular-season finale still carries major significance for the Wings who will be trying to grab some momentum heading into the playoffs.

“(Saturday) night is all about between the ears for both teams. We need to pop their confidence and kind of keep it going,” Jennings said. “The games against these guys are always like that, highly competitive, close games, kind of get you going and that’s good, but we need to get out on the upside of it.”

Not only do the Wings want to get back on track, they also want to prevent the Bruins from heading into their series with a winning streak.

“For them, they’re going to be wanting to come in and get the win and go in with that big streak here.” Jennings said, “and we need to end that.”

The Wings will try to finish what they started on Friday night, an effort that produced multiple opportunities, just not quite enough goals. Tonight’s puck drop is 7:15 p.m.

“I thought for so much of the game we had a lot going down hill on them. We did a lot of the things that we worked on this week in practice in terms of trying to fix things and I thought we took a lot of that out of our game, but its tough,” Jennings said. “Our penalty kill was good tonight, power play generated opportunities, just didn’t generate goals.”

To see complete stats, click on the following link:

https://www.aberdeenwings.com/stats/game-center/31999