Monday Update

Marty Standish is, in fact, not in Laredo, and it seems he probably won't be. Interesting that someone who basically thrown on the street by his team would insist on being so loyal to it. Nothing is definite yet, but I don't think anyone is counting on him coming here.

Rookie defenseman Ryan James Hand, however, should be back on the ice pretty soon. He's been on the IR since ironically breaking his hand (Well, just a finger, I think.) in the Bucks' first preseason game against the Rio Grande Valley Killer Bees.

Hand has been working his way back into practice gradually and today had on a regular dark blue defenseman's jersey and participated in all of the drills and everything. Coach Ruskowski said his return is dependant on the doctors' and trainer Bobby Moore's opinions of the situation, as they want to make "100 and 100 and 100 percent" sure that he is ready to play before putting him back on the ice in a game situation.

But back to those Killer Bees for a minute. I was just looking over their schedule and realized that they have a home-and-home with Odessa this weekend, after playing a game here against the Bucks. That means they have to drive up to Laredo on Thursday afternoon, play a game, hop back in the bus, drive 10 hours, sleep for a bit, play another game, then drive 10 hours back home only to play another game that night. I know the Bucks' schedule is unkind, too, at certain points this season, but yikes.

At practice today, Ruskowski had the guys scrimmage in an interesting fashion. Frustrated with the passing mistakes he's seen from them this season, he had everyone right-handed play with a lefty stick and vice versa. Then, after they had enough of that, he let them switch back and was impressed with the results.

"Maybe I should do that more often," he said with a laugh. "When we put the stick back to the way they shoot, the pucks were right on the sticks, and the passes were good. It makes them realize they have to make good passes. We did a pretty good job against Shreveport, even though they were shorthanded. We passed the puck around pretty well, created scoring opportunities. When a team passes well, they play well, especially ours."

I just now received the e-mail naming this week's Player and Goaltender of the Week, and, surprisingly enough, Sebastien Centomo has earned the latter honor. This is not to say he didn't deserve it; I just thought it would go to someone who had played in more than one game. But congratulations to Centomo; he definitely deserves it. I had already planned on having a section of my notebook in tomorrow's paper devoted to the goaltending, so I will just add this to that.

Tulsa Oilers forward Michel Beausoleil was named Player of the Week after scoring a hat trick and handing out two assist in the Oilers' unlikely 6-5 win over the Colorado Eagles on Friday night.

It's time to get working on that notebook, but I might post some leftover stuff on here later. As previously mentioned, there are no CHL games tonight. In the NHL, the Ottawa Senators are at the New York Rangers, the Vancouver Canucks are at the New York Islanders, the Edmonton Oilers are at the Detroit Red Wings, the Boston Bruins are at the Toronto Maple Leafs, and the San Jose Sharks are at the Nashville Predators.

UPDATE: I wasn't going to say anything about this because I don't really know the situation, but I guess it's worth noting that Texas Brahmas player/assistant coach Lance Galbraith has been placed on team suspension. Robert Keith has the only currently available information about this interesting move. He says:

The specific reasons for the coach Wildfong's decision are unknown but fans have witnessed characteristics unbecoming a leader during practices. They have also grown weary of Galbraith drawing penalties without good reason and for not being more involved in scoring. Galbraith has just five points (2 G, 3 A) on 24 shots (-6 rating) and 44 penalty minutes so far this season.