Game Day No. 21

The Bucks will host the New Mexico Scorpions tonight in their first of three games this week; my preview in today's Times talks about all three.

Tonight will be the first time the Bucks and Scorpions face off since Nov. 24 of last year, and the Bucks (15-5-0, 30 points) will look to capitalize on the early-season struggles by the Scorpions (8-12-1, 17 pts.) to win their sixth straight and move back into a tie atop the Southern Conference standings.

The Odessa Jackalopes (15-5-2, 32 pts.) took over the conference lead with a 5-2 win over the Amarillo Gorillas (6-14-0, 12 pts.) last night.

I hadn't mentioned this in my previous posts about tonight's game, though it had been brought up earlier, but tonight's game will bring Lyon Messier, current Scorpions defenseman and son of NHL great Mark Messier, to Laredo. The picture on his Pointstreak profile amuses me for some reason.

Bryan Benway took Lyon's presence in the Gateway City as a chance to make fun of the elder Messier using "the word of Rosco" and professional wrestling slang. Benway, you might want to watch out tonight; his kid's pretty tough, too.

Who knows, maybe Ryan James Hand got taken off the IR just in time to duke it out with the little Moose.

For more about tonight's game, you can read Benway's preview or peruse the pre-game notes on Pointstreak.

Meanwhile, Brian Sandalow has released his Southeast Division rankings for this week, which understandably keep the Bucks on top. Not sure what people are saying about Coach Ruskowski, but I must agree that Darryl Smith was a great pickup. Be sure to check Saturday's Times for a feature about him and his hot start in Laredo.

Sandalow also expresses some concern (and confusion) about the state of the Rio Grande Valley Killer Bees and shares some news about the team's TV situation.

Elsewhere in the CHL blogosphere, Adam Dunivan has an interesting post about the Colorado Eagles' goaltenders' masks (which makes me feel better about my fascination with players using white vs. black stick tape or vice versa).

Oh, and by the way...

















Heck yeah.

UPDATE: My laptop is absolutely refusing to load blogger.com, so I am not going to be able to live blog this one until that changes.