Thunder falls to Ice Dogs to wrap up busy weekend

Las Vegas Thunder coach Bob Bourne is giving his squad today and Tuesday off.

You can bet more than a few players will spend that time catching up on their sleep.

The Thunder finished a stretch of three games in three nights with a 2-0 loss to the Long Beach Ice Dogs on Sunday night before an announced crowd of 3,061 at the Thomas & Mack Center. And considering the team's travel itinerary over the weekend, it probably shouldn't have come as much of a surprise the team had little left for Sunday night's contest.

"We were dead tired tonight," Bourne said. "I'm not making excuses. But we had just no gas left in the tank tonight."

It was a draining 50 hours for the Thunder to say the least.

After a 3-2 shootout loss to the Indianapolis Ice on Friday night at the Thomas & Mack, the Thunder caught a 2 a.m. red-eye flight to Houston.

"We got into our hotel rooms around 7:30 in the morning," Bourne said.

Still, the Thunder found enough energy to surprise the Southwest Division-leading Aeros, 3-1, on Saturday night.

Then Sunday morning -- "5:30 Las Vegas time," Bourne said -- Thunder players got their wake-up calls for the three-plus hour flight back home for Sunday night's game against Long Beach, landing in Las Vegas shortly before noon and barely in time for a quick nap.

"To me it's just ludicrous for us to have this kind of schedule," Bourne said.

Long Beach, which also flew into town Sunday morning after back-to-back home games against Chicago, also was playing its third game in three nights. However, the Ice Dogs, and especially former Thunder goaltender Manny Legace, seemed to have a lot more energy for the contest.

Legace had 22 saves as Long Beach, 4-0 winners over Chicago on Saturday, made it back-to-back shutouts. Ironically, the Ice Dogs hadn't posted a shutout victory this season until Saturday and now have gone 124 minutes and 56 seconds without allowing a goal.

It could have been a whole lot, worse, too.

Las Vegas goaltender Petr Franek sparkled in defeat, making 28 saves, many of them from close in, to keep the Thunder in the game. The two goals he did allow -- a first-period score by right winger Claude Justras off a nifty pass from Dan Lambert and a deflection by Dan Bylsma on a Nathan Lafayette slapper -- were textbook.

"We just didn't get it done today," Bourne said. "We were tired. ... but I thought we played about as well as we could under the circumstances."

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