T-Day

Working on holidays isn't terribly fun, but the fact that Starbucks was open made my day and seeing this video clip certainly didn't hurt:



Many congrats to Curry on his first NHL win.

Meanwhile, the Poinstreak transactions page added something to yesterday's list earlier that hadn't actually been there yesterday, and it seems defenseman Vincent Zaore-Vanie has been placed on the 30-day IR.

Because the team had 19 players on the active roster previously, no one is really needed to take Zaore's spot, but it can be assumed that defenseman Ryan James Hand will eventually. He took the trip out to Arizona with the team, but Coach Ruskowski told me yesterday that he doesn't expect Hand to make his regular-season debut out there unless they have more injury trouble.

Obviously the upcoming two-game road swing against the Arizona Sundogs is a big one, especially for the guys who were around for that Game 7 loss to the defending champions last season.

I'll have a preview in tomorrow's paper with some thoughts on that and the importance of this series for other reasons. Hopefully the guys made good use of the new bus on that 20-hour ride; at leas Bryan Benway didn't seem to mind it.

Meanwhile, the Bucks' two biggest division rivals both suffered pretty bad losses last night, and their coaches were none too pleased.

Brian Sandalow has the story from Hidalgo, where Rio Grande Valley Killer Bees head coach Chris Brooks didn't really have anything good to say about his team's 4-1 loss to the Mississippi RiverKings. In the grainy postgame video with Rio media intern Alvaro Balderas, he holds back a bit but still lets his team know what he thought of that performance. Poor Robin Bouchard.

In Corpus, Greg Rajan had the reaction from the IceRays' 4-0 loss to the Odessa Jackalopes. Seriously, what is it with the Jacks on the road? It seems head coach Sylvain Cloutier was so disappointed with his team's showing that he decided to hold a mandatory practice this morning. I won't steal Sandalow's joke about that.

The CHL is off tonight, and the NHL only has two games, with the Toronto Maple Leafs and Ottawa Senators currently in action and the Calgary Flames and Vancouver Canucks facing off later tonight.

Scores: Senators 2, Maple Leafs 1 (SO); Flames 4, Canucks 3.