Game Day No. 24

In a few hours, the Bucks will take on the Rio Grande Valley Killer Bees in their sixth of 14 meetings this season.

There's plenty of reading material about this game: my preview, Brian Sandalow's preview from The Monitor, Bryan Benway's preview, Killer Bees Vice President of Communications Rich Bocchini's game notes and the Pointstreak pre-game notes.

The Killer Bees are still without a few key guys, but the Bucks are more focused on themselves heading into tonight's game after a couple of losses. As I talk about in my preview, Coach (Or should I say President now?) Ruskowski saw a lot of things he wasn't happy with in those games, but they weren't consistent problems.

When I spoke to Ruskowski for my notebook earlier this week, he said that the guys have been playing "stupid" with all the unnecessary penalties they've taken. Those penalties were exactly the problem in the 3-2 loss to the Odessa Jackalopes, as all three Jacks' goals came on the advantage.

I asked Ruskowski what he thinks needs to be done to get the team more disciplined yesterday, and his response was a bit more severe than I expected.

"It's something that I've been regimental in saying all the time," Ruskowski said. "I don't know what the next step is. Do I bench them? Do I fine them? I don't know. I'm hoping that these guys want to win so much that they would take matters into their own hands and say, 'Okay, I'm not going to do this anymore, I'm not going to do that.' They have no discipline. If they can't do it, then I'm going to step in and do something, but I don't know what."

I also talked to veteran forward Bobby Russell about the topic and definitely hit a nerve as he was one of the Bucks' players to take a penalty late in the loss and kind of help seal the win for the Jackalopes, as is noted in my preview.

It should be noted, though, that Russell is clearly not the only one having problems with the new rules. In fact, I'm not sure there is one player who sticks out in that regard; they've all taken unnecessary hooking and slashing penalties at some point.

I asked Russell if he thought it was moreso the new rules that are a problem, or if the fact that a lot of the Bucks' players were in other leagues last season has any effect. He said the stricter calls are probably the issue, but that the team needs to get used to them and move on.

"It's the new rules," Russell said. "But, I mean, it's cut-and-dry. Once you raise your stick up and put your stick on the puck carrier's gloves, that's a penalty. There's so many different rules...it's zero tolerance. Once you do a certain thing, it's a penalty. Everybody should be used to it by now, but in the whole league, penalties are up. We just have to take note of it and try to stay out of the box."

In addition to staying out of the box, the Bucks need to do some other things if they want to get another win streak started tonight, and Ruskowski highlighted defensive coverage and creating scoring chances as a couple of them.

"We didn't score a whole lot of goals," Ruskowski said. "That was a factor, too. I know when we go on the road, (our opponents) play a little better offensively, but we have to play better defense. That's something that we have to improve on. Defense, defense, defense. Then when we get that down, we can start working on offense, try to score some goals, too. Last two games, we were just in a funk. Some teams when they get the lead, they just play a neutral ice trap. It's a boring game, but we have to find a way to crack that and do what we have to do to score goals."

This might sound a little silly, but one thing they're going to need to score goals is shoot the puck. Obvious enough, eh? But one problem that has frustrated Ruskowski to no end is the team's hesitance to shoot, especially during the power play, and also right around the net. Their failure to pick up rebounds and loose pucks around the net was definitely a huge factor in the loss to the Corpus Christi IceRays last Thursday, which even IceRays head coach Sylvain Cloutier noted after the game.

I asked Ruskowski yesterday if their problems with driving hard to the net come from the same kind of fear that makes them drive him crazy with their lack of physicality. He just looked at me for a minute then said that was a great question. I guess only they can be sure.

"I don't know,"Ruskowski said. "I just wish they were more physical. I like a team that's more physical. At times we've shown a little spark, then after it's, 'Oh crap,' we're getting hit again. I really think and really feel that if we want to be a contender, we have to be more physical out there."

The forecheck is one area where he believes the team has been severely lacking, and he is definitely working to incorporate that more. Just in case anyone is unfamiliar with the term, forechecking is when a team goes for checks in the offensive zone with the intention of setting up a scoring opportunity. Backchecking, on the other hand, is checking around one's own goal to try to prevent such opportunities for the other team. Ruskowski would like to be seeing more of both.

"We have to finish our checks," he said. "It doesn't matter how small you are; you can finish a check. That's where we need to be."

So, basically, he wants his team to play better defense, shoot the puck more, improve on the power play, be more physical...oh, and play with heart. That's a big one. As stated previously, the problems aren't any more consistent than the positive things about the team, so we'll see what stands out on the ice tonight.

Of course, there is the fact that the Killer Bees have only 16 active players...but the Bucks aren't looking at that as an advantage at all.

"I don't really think it's an opportunity," Russell said. "Sure, they lost a couple of veteran guys and have a couple guys on the IR, but they have good young players over there, as well. Those guys have been sitting on the bench or not playing very much, so those guys are hungry for their chance to play, and they're trying to prove to the coach. We can't be thinking we're going to win just by how many (players they have). It's not like that at all. Every point counts, every game's a big game for us, being division games, and the bottom line is we have to play hard as a team and get the win."

Obviously the personnel losses haven't affected the Killer Bees' ability to score, as they broke Dustin Traylen's streak of one-goal games with a 6-goal effort last night. We'll see how tonight turns out.

Meanwhile, I guess now is as good a time as any to catch up on things in the rest of the blogging world...

Brian Sandalow had his hands full with the Rob Voltera situation, which was one of the topics covered in his weekly notebook and something mentioned frequently on his blog.

Speaking of Voltera, the aforementioned Rich Bocchini has an interesting post about all that on his Killer Bees' blog, which includes a letter from Voltera to the fans.

Back to Sandman2, though, he also had his weekly Southeast Division rankings and shared his votes for this season's ridiculously formatted All-Star Game.

I was actually given the opportunity to vote for the game myself this season (Apparently I wasn't qualified last year?), but I will not be sharing my votes on the blog for security purposes...just kidding. Kind of. But I'm really not going to post them.

Oh, and in case anyone cares about the NHL All-Star voting even a fraction of as much as I do, Jonathan Toews made a major leap today, and the current Western Conference forward voting has no more Red Wings in the starting lineup. Ironic (but totally okay by me) that this happened immediately following their 6-0 win over the Sharks, who are one of the best teams in the league. Sid is still atop the Eastern Conference voting and quickly approaching a million nods. Woot. Oh, and this is cool, too.

Back in the CHL, Greg Rajan also shared his All-Star votes. So did Adam Dunivan.

This All-Star talk reminds me that the Bucks need to win all three of their games this weekend (and have the Odessa Jackalopes gain three or fewer points this week) if Ruskowski is going to be co-coach with Doug Sauter for the All-Star Game.

Rajan also had news of a new IceRays veteran, more on the Killer Bees' win last night and his take on the Ruskowski as president decision. I wonder if Bobby Moore minds that someone else is getting credit for making the Gatorade.

Bob Przybylo posted a new CHL power poll earlier this week, but his opinion may have changed after what happened between the Blazers and Eagles on Wednesday.

The Eagles moved back to the top of the CHL Coaches' Poll that was released earlier this week. The Bucks fell from No. 3 to No. 4 in the poll, dropping them behind the No. 2 Jackalopes, who were No. 6 last week.

Bob Hoffman had "Shots from the Point" for Monday and today. Oh, and Bossier-Shreveport Mudbugs netminder Jon Horrell won Performance of the Week with his 31-save shutout against the Wichita Thunder.

Now that I have covered about a million topics, I think I should probably stop typing. I'll post more about standings and those types of things after tonight's game.