Catching Up...Part One

Sorry I didn't get around to this earlier today, but I got a bit distracted by the Standish ordeal, then by this...which occupied a lot more of my time than I had expected. It was totally worth it, though.

To clear up the Standish thing, the Bucks have his rights, and that is it. If he doesn't want to play here, they can't force him to, and the Bucks are not obligated to sign him, either. Coach Ruskowski said he doesn't expect Standish to arrive until early next week, and only then will contract negotiations with him become a priority.

The Blazers' press release tells you most of what you need to know about Standish stats-wise; he is top five in pretty much every statistical category for them, including penalty minutes. At the start of this season, Standish was also 25th all-time among all CHL players in goals (188)

When I talked to Ruskowski about the aqcuisition, he said he had seen Standish play not only with Oklahoma City, but while he (Ruskowski) was coaching the Knoxville Speed and Standish was playing for the Missouri River Otters, also of the IHL (UHL).

At 5-foot-8, 180-pounds, you'd assume Standish has an extra little something about him to keep his professional career thriving, even if at a minor league level. Ruskowski said that Standish is exactly the kind of fiery, feisty small player he likes, and we've all seen how well that can work out.

Speaking of Goupil, he will be facing his former team, the Wichita Thunder, tomorrow night for the first time since being traded. When I did a feature on him last season, he told me that he was actually kind of hurt when that deal went down, but making it to the playoffs certainly helped him deal with that.

Goupil said he still has some friends who are playing with Wichita that he keeps in touch with, and he'd really like to show them his best game tomorrow night.

Anyway, as you may have seen on Bryan Benway's blog, practice was fairly short today because of the games coming up this weekend.

At the start of the week, Ruskowski was about as happy as you can expect a professional coach to get, but midway through today's practice he started to get a bit heated about something. When I asked him about it after the fact, he said the guys seemed to be lagging a bit, and he needed to "remind them why they're here."

Of course, if Standish does get signed, one of them won't be here anymore, so we'll see how that all plays out. Another roster move you can expect to see soon is rookie defenseman Jaye Judd coming off the IR this weekend.

I'll post tomorrow morning or afternoon with some leftover quotes from practice this week and some other information about the upcoming games, but now let's get caught up with blogging around the league...or at least the division.

Brian Sandalow was a bit busy this week with this whole ordeal but still found time to update his Southeast Division rankings...which stayed exactly the same. Fair enough.

He also had a little blurb about Daryl Moore's facial hair (sadly, no art) and a note about some happenings with his favorite NHL team.

As far as the Rio Grande Valley Killer Bees' games this weekend, there is a blog and a preview.

Oh, and here is his notebook that ran earlier this week. Speaking of which, here is my notebook that ran in Tuesday's paper.

In Corpus, Greg Rajan was blogging about 1-goal games, Corpus Christi IceRays veterans (past and present) and the CHL's retired numbers.

He also posted his latest "Meet the IceRays" video, which features Mark Tobin, who was a teammate of the one and only Sidney Crosby in juniors.

On the video front, there should be a new "5-Minute Major" tomorrow, and the intro sounds promising...

I'm getting a bit tired of all these links, so let's jump to the league stuff...you can check out this week's "Chalk Talk," which has the Bucks on a 7-game road trip instead of a homestand for some reason or Monday's "Shots from the Point."

A big topic there was the impressive 3-0 weekend the Odessa Jackalopes had on the road last week, beating the Bucks, Killer Bees and Texas Brahmas. That road trip is also nominated for Performance of the Week.

As you can see in that press release, Wylie Rogers did not have an easy time winning last week's voting in spite of posting 53 saves in the Killer Bees' win for which he was nominated. Maybe the New Mexico Scorpions' fans have a system similar to what the Habs' fans are doing with the All-Star voting...

Anyway, there were no games in the CHL tonight, while the NHL had 16 teams in action.

Scores: Boston Bruins 6, Montreal Canadiens 1; Detroit Red Wings 4, Tampa Bay Lightning 3; New York Islanders 3, Ottawa Senators 1; Pittsburgh Penguins 5, Philadelphia Flyers 4 (SO); Minnesota Wild 4, Phoenix Coyotes 0; Los Angeles Kings 3, Dallas Stars 2; Toronto Maple Leafs 5, Edmonton Oilers 2; San Jose Sharks 6, Calgary Flames 1.