Catching Up

As I had mentioned on Monday, the team wasn't able to practice on Tuesday because of the WWE/ECW show at the LEC, but they did take a spin class and watch film from Saturday's 2-1 loss to the Bossier-Shreveport Mudbugs, which didn't look any different to Coach Ruskowski than it had that night.

"I think sometimes watching the video and watching yourself play and do different things," Coach Ruskowski said. "I was looking back at the game and going, 'How did we lose this game?' I thought we played very well; we took the play to them, we were on them all the time. I looked back and thought the only place that we lost it is where either we weren't disciplined or a couple bad plays by the referees, whatever you want to call it, to make it a 5-on-3. That was the gamebreaker right there."

But the past is the past, and the Bucks are now focused on this weekend's three-in-three, with road games against the Rio Grande Valley Killer Bees and Corpus Christi IceRays and their first meeting with the expansion Rapid City Rush, at the LEC.

Coach felt like the guys accomplished a lot in practice yesterday, but that didn't keep him from working them hard this morning.

The team practiced for nearly the full two hours and will get an early skate in before leaving for the Valley tomorrow.

But back to yesterday...

When I spoke to Coach after practice, he spoke to me about a few of the things he had been trying to get done.

"We accomplished a lot today," he said. "We had one drill today that accomplished three things we were lacking in the loss. We want our defense to be more mobile D-to-D and carry the puck up; I think we're not moving our feet enough, getting checked too easily. If we can get the puck, move it in, get the passes and dump the puck, it makes us work a little harder down low. We worked on that, we worked on our breakouts when the defenseman doesn't stop behind the net. We worked on a lot of good things, and we actually worked on the 5-on-3 and how we play the 5-on-3 and how we go across and do the different things we're supposed to do. Hopefully, they can register that in their minds and keep that locked up in case we have to use it again."

As far as the third scoring line, Coach will be rotating guys around until he finds a combination that works well together. Right now, rookies Ryan Fuller and Joey Moggach and second-year forwards Erick Lizon and Matt Summers are the players he has working to try to put that line together. Seventh-year defenseman Steve Weidlich is also in that mix and will start as a forward tomorrow night in his first game of the regular season.

At the end of the practice, Coach had the guys do a shootout drill, with half the team shooting on No. 1 goaltender Sebastien Centomo and half on rookie backup.

Bobby Russell, Jeff Bes, Igor Agarunov, Jason Dixon, Devin Featherstone, Alex Goupil, Summers, Lizon, Coach Ruskowski and Vincent Zaore-Vanie shot on Centomo.

No one scored.

Goupil got closest, faking Centomo out right, but missed wide left.

Gibb set aside shots from Serge Dube, Fuller, Adam Rivet, Moggach, Darryl Smith and Weidlich, while allowing goals from defensemen Jaye Judd and Mike Gooch.

Today, the guys did some 5-on-5 work and some more breakouts

Brian Sandalow has a report on practice at the RGV Ice Center yesterday and a notebook on the Bees' start to the season.

Greg Rajan has a new "Meet the IceRays" video, featuring CHL Player of the Week Chris Richards, and his take on 43-year-old Claude Lemieux and his attempt to return to the NHL via the Arizona Sundogs. The four-time Stanley Cup Champion and former Conn Smythe Trophy winner has been skating with the team in practices; we'll see where that goes.

Anyway, here is the CHL's weekly chalk talk, which came out yesterday. Keep in mind the fact that the records do not reflect last night's games.

Not sure if any of you checked the boxes from those, but former Corey Courchene and Derek Legault, who each played part of last season with the Bucks, each registered a point in last night's game between Arizona and the New Mexico Scorpions.

Courchene, currently on the Scorps' roster, had a power play goal, while Legault, currently a Sundog, assisted on a Karl Sellan power play score. It was each player's first point of the season.

Another player who spent time on last season's roster, Tyler Harder, was reactivated from a suspension to the Oklahoma City Blazers roster yesterday.

You can see all the latest CHL transactions here.

There will be a preview for tomorrow night's game (and the entire weekend) in tomorrow's Times, and I'll post some leftover news and notes about this weekend's games on the blog. I'm currently not sure if I'll attend the morning skate tomorrow, but it's a possibility.

This weekend should definitely be an interesting one, with games against the new-look Bees and IceRays and a team the Bucks have never seen before in the Rush. Here is some of Coach's take on facing these teams:

You look at Rio, they beat Rocky Mountain 7-2. You look at Corpus, they put Tulsa 12-3. You look at Rapid City, they went down to Colorado and Colorado beat them in high-scoring shootouts, so they have goal scoring power, too. It's weird; the first week is kind of a weird week, and we're just going to have to play our game the way we should, and hopefully that will be good enough to win. It's definitely going to show where we have to improve on this team.

I will be covering the Cigarroa-Nixon football game tomorrow night, but I will try to post updates from the Bucks game from my Blackberry. Saturday, I'll be in the office, so I'll watch the game on Nifty and blog from what I see there. Sunday, I'll be at the game, so you can expect game updates like from previous home games.

Oh, and to respond to the anonymous question about whether or not the new guy is here...there are a few things that need to be resolved before I can really answer. I can tell you, though, that there will not be anyone new traveling with the team to Rio and Corpus this weekend.