Another Week Begins

As you could probably guess, today's practice was a bit different than last Friday's.

Coach Ruskowski said all he wanted to work on today was skating and passing, so that's all the guys did, with each line getting plenty of chances to skate together in hopes of getting the players used to their linemates.

It seems that for now, the top two lines will be pretty consistent (Jeff Bes-Darryl Smith-Rick Kozak, Alex Goupil-Jason Dixon-Bobby Russell), while the third line will be centered (most of the time) by newcoming Ryan Salvis and feature Igor Agarunov, Erick Lizon and Joey Olson as alternating wingers. Assumably, Agarunov will get the most shifts out of those three, but who knows if he'll most back to the line with Dixon and Goupil or what.

At the end of practice, Ruskowski had the players skate from next to the net to the blue line then back, then shoot the puck off the boards into the opposing net. As soon as they got it in, they were done and could leave the ice. Serge Dube was the first man off, then everyone else started leaving one by one...until, about 40 tries later, Dixon (who was out of breath at this point) finally netted a puck. Ruskowski was nearly doubled over laughing at him, as were the rest of the guys who stuck around to watch; it was nice to see everyone in such a good mood.

Anyway, my weekly notebook will be running in tomorrow's Times, and it will focus on how important it will be for the team to keep up what it did on Saturday if they want to be successful this season, as well as the physicality issue and some players' statuses heading into the coming weeks.

The CHL is off tonight, as usual, but I will update later with the weekly award winners.

In the NHL, there are just two games, with the Tampa Bay Lightning at the Washington Capitals and the Edmonton Oilers at the New York Rangers.

Each of the "Three Stars" for the NHL this week is a goaltender, with Robert Luongo of the Vancouver Canucks earning No. 1 honors, rookie Steve Mason of the Columbus Blue Jackets taking the No. 2 spot and Brent Johnson of the Washington Capitals being named the No. 3 star.