But It Doesn't Feel Like Friday

Sorry for the lack of updates yesterday; hope at least some of you watched the Winter Classic. In spite of the (evil) Red Wings winning, it was a lot of fun to see. Not nearly as fun as last year's, though, of course.

My excuses for not posting are not as good as Brian Sandalow's, but I have to admit that working a few weeks straight around the holidays while the Penguins are in a major funk has gotten to me a bit.

However, the "press release" in Sandalow's latest blog post cheered me up a bit. Rio Grande Valley Killer Bees Vice President of Communications Rich Bocchini mentioned it at the game on Wednesday night, but I hadn't been able to read it until today. It's too good not to share:

The McAllen Adult Hockey League is proud to announce that forward Dennis Maxwell has been called up to the Rio Grande Valley Killer Bees of the Central Hockey League. The 34-year-old Hamilton, Ontario, native appeared in six games for the MAHL’s Maverick Industrial squad totaling a league leading 21 points (16 goals, 5 assists) and 6 PIMs.

"This just shows the caliber of our league," exclaimed MAHL Commissioner Craig Lewis. "Many people think this is simply a local beer league but with Maxy’s call-up I think people have to take notice. I expect other CHL teams will follow the Killer Bees lead and will be scouting us regularly, looking for that player who may have fallen through the cracks."

While the league is obviously pleased with Maxwell’s promotion, his Maverick Industrial teammates have mixed emotions. "We’re happy for Maxi, but now we’re screwed," said teammate Jay Cortez. "He accounted for more than half of our goals! Now what the hell are we going to do?!!"

The MAHL is off for the New Year’s holiday and will resume play Sunday night at 8:45pm at the RGV Ice Center in a battle of first place teams, Valley Yamaha and Team Red Fish. Tickets are available at the door.

Awesome. Thanks to Sandalow for sharing that. Something Bucks' fans might be less happy to see in that post is that his weekly rankings have dropped the Bucks to No. 2 behind the Texas Brahmas in his Southeast Division rankings. Seems fair enough.

Obviously, tomorrow night will do a lot to help determine which team is actually best at about the halfway point of the season, as the teams could be tied for first place if the Brahmas win their game against the Corpus Christi IceRays tonight.

The Brahmas will be returning to the LEC for the first time since Feb. 29 of last year (Still feels weird to say that!), and they'll be looking for a similar result, I'm sure. The teams have only met once since becoming Southeast Division opponents, and the Bucks were able to eek out a 2-1 shootout win at the NYTEX Centre in North Richland Hills on Dec. 6.

At the time, Coach Ruskowski mentioned the fact that the Brahmas had just lost forward Jason Deitsch to the Houston Aeros as a factor in the game, and this time around, Darryl Smith's recent departure has evened things up a bit.

Deitsch, Smith and fellow callup John Adams are one of the topics of Bob Hoffman's "Shots from the Point" for today, while Brahmas forward Jordan Cameron has been named the CHL's Player of the Month. Colorado Eagles netminder Andrew Penner earned the Goaltender of the Month honors.

I forgot to mention that Tulsa Oilers head coach Dan Hodge had been fired when he was, but today the team announced that it has hired Tony Martino, who led the team to a 1992-93 championship, to take over behind the bench.

Meanwhile, the team that leads the conference where the Oilers are cellar dwellers has once again held onto the top spot in the CHL Coaches' Poll. That team being the Colorado Eagles, of course. The Bucks stayed in the No. 4 spot, surprisingly enough.

Oh, and in case you missed the online-only story about Wednesday night's game, here it is. Oh, and I also had a story in today's paper about Ruskowski's expectations for 2009...or at least the 2008-09 part of it. Fun how nearly every time my stories get comments, they are factually inaccurate.

To clarify, "Pink in the Rink" night is next Friday, Jan. 9. I'll post more about that later.