About Last Night

I have to say I was a bit surprised when I spoke to Coach Ruskowski last night and he told me that he thought his team came out aggressive and played really well through the first period until being deflated by that Thunder goal.

Obviously the guys weren't slacking or anything like that, but they didn't seem quite as "on" as they had in their last win, and I had expected Ruskowski to have something negative to say about that.

In the middle period, it was a bit of a different story.

"In the second period, they (the Thunder) played very conservative hockey," Ruskowski said. "They played very hard, played good position and forced us to make bad passes, which we did."

But the third period was what it all came down to, and one lucky break plus a nice little slapper by Steve Weidlich (who had missed practically every shot he tried to put in the net during pre-game warmups) was all the Bucks needed to pull off a win.

Here is my game story from last night, and here is Bryan Benway's.

Much more shocking than the Bucks beating the Thunder was this game. Did anyone really think the Oilers, who were 2-5-1 before last night, would go into Loveland and hand the Eagles a loss? I'm pretty sure most people thought that one was over when Colorado went up 4-1 in the second, but obviously that was not the case. Definitely a huge win for Tulsa. You can read Eagles beat writer Adam Dunivan's take for a bit more in-depth look at the game. Let's see if Guy St. Vincent's 53-save performance against the highest-scoring team in the league gets him a Performance of the Week nomination.

The night's other shocker was the Amarillo Gorillas dismantling the Odessa Jackalopes in a 6-2 game at Odessa. Alexandre Vincent and Juha Toivonen each allowed three goals, on 12 and 18 shots, respectively. Amarillo was 3-7-0 (six pts.) heading into that one, while Odessa was 7-2-1 (15 pts.) and coming off a 3-0 weekend against three pretty solid Southeast Division teams (Laredo, Rio Grande Valley and Texas).

Another mildly surprising game was Arizona's 7-1 win over Rapid City (2-4-4, eight pts.), which seems to be fading fast. Or maybe the Sundogs (5-6-1, 11 pt.) are just starting to regroup now that they're getting some of their AHL guys back...

Neither Brian Sandalow nor Greg Rajan was at the game between the Killer Bees (6-1-1, 13 pts.) and IceRays (3-6-1, seven pts.) last night, but it's pretty clear that special teams are still haunting Corpus as the team allowed two power play goals (both by Robin Bouchard) in 46 seconds to let Rio Grande Valley take a 2-0 lead, which it never relinquished en route to a 5-2 win. However, the IceRays did score two power-play goals of their own in two fewer chances than the Killer Bees had, so that could be a good sign for them.

Rio Grande Valley backup Christian Boucher had another solid performance in the loss, saving 34 of 36 Corpus shots, while the IceRays' Kris Tebbs saved only 11 of 13 before being replaced by Dustin (Dusty?) Traylen, who saved 22 of 23.

Though he wasn't at the game, Sandalow has a little blurb up about it. And, as promised, he has posted this week's "5-Minute Major."

Of course, in the first game after I mentioned Matt Summers having a point in each of his contests so far with Mississippi (5-6-0, 10 pts.), he didn't, and they lost 3-1 to Oklahoma City (9-0-2, 20 pts.). Of course, losing to the Blazers is nothing to be ashamed of this season. Andy Franck has been a beast.

In New Mexico, the Rocky Mountain Rage finally picked up their second win of the season, improving to a league-worst 2-7-1 (five pts.) with a 5-2 win over the Scorpions (5-6-1, 11 pts.).