Housekeeping

This post is mostly going to be one with the purpose of catching up on some things.

First of all, as promised, I have some links to more info about last night's CHL playoff games.

From the Southern Conference Quarterfinals, Greg Rajan has his observations and a game story from the Corpus Christi IceRays' 6-2 win over the Rio Grande Valley Killer Bees.

From the same game, Brian Sandalow has pre-game, live game and postgame blogs and a game story of his own.

That series concludes with tonight's Game 3 at 7:30 p.m. at Dodge Arena.

From the Northern Conference Quarterfinals, there are game stories about the Bossier-Shreveport Mudbugs' 5-4 overtime win against the Rocky Mountain Rage in the Shreveport Times and the Bossier Press-Tribune.

As with the other quarterfinal series, that one will conclude tonight.

And then there is the Northern Conference Semifinal series which got an early start with the Oklahoma City Blazers' 2-1 overtime win against the Mississippi RiverKings last night.

Bob Przybylo has a very intense game blog (similar in style to what they do for the Penguins at the Post-Gazette...), a wrapup and a preview blog for Game 2 of that series tonight. His newspaper, The Oklahoman, ran a story with a "staff reports" byline, but I imagine Bob was doing most of those reports from phone calls and what he saw on Nifty.

There is also a story from the RiverKings' side of things in The Memphis Commercial Appeal.

Now, for a few other housekeeping links and quotes...

Robert Keith from the Texas Brahmas Insider Blog was in attendance for the Bucks' games against the Brahmas last week.

He has been kind enough to share his photo albums from the Bucks' 4-3 overtime win on Wednesday and the Brahmas' 5-0 rout on Thursday.

There are some neat shots in both albums, including plenty from the catwalk on Thursday night...and solid proof of reader Rolando Gallegos' coaching debut:

As always, thanks to Robert for sharing those pictures. Hope you and your family enjoyed your trip and had a safe drive home!

Meanwhile, the topic of amateurs has come up previously this week, so I talked to Coach Ruskowski about it a bit more in-depth yesterday.

He has a forward and a defenseman who he is looking at, but one of their age's is making things difficult and the other is still playing, presumably in an NCAA tournament.

Here's what he said:

"We're working on a couple guys now to come in to help us out. One of the kids is 19 years old, and I have to get permission from the team for him to come here. Right now, I'm not getting phone calls back from them, so his agents working on that now. I'm waiting for another kid to finish a hockey tournament, so that should be done this weekend, so hopefully we can get a hold of him and bring him down as soon as possible. Then we can have another forward and another defenseman in case we have any injury problems. We can bring amateurs anytime we want, and we're going to see how everything works out because I don't want to spend any extra money I don't have to, but I don't want to be caught in a situation where I'm shorthanded. So I just want to get everybody lined up knowing what's going to happen if something does happen so if it does, we have it covered."

As far as letting Mike Gooch go to clear up roster space...Ruskowski seemed pretty upset but believed that was the decision he had to make. Here are his thoughts on that move:

"Boy, that was just a hard decision. I know that, the last four of five days, that I had to make a decision, and the decision wasn't an easy decision. Mike Gooch is a great kid, and I love him to death. But he's just kind of a small defenseman, and when we get up against bigger teams and stronger forwards, he struggles a bit in the corners and defensive zone. That was the only - the only - thing that was hampering him from staying. He moves the puck well, he skates pretty well, he's a smart kid and a great kid off the ice, a great kid to be around period. He's just a classy young man that I enjoy being around, and unfortunately, that just had to happen. But he's a good kid; he's going to go home and be with his fiancée, and I just hope that he has nothing but success. If I could ever help him, in hockey or his life, then I'd be there to help him out because I truly love the kid, and he's a great kid."

There are a few other things I could touch on, but I should probably go write my stories for the print edition first. Tomorrow's front page will be pretty Bucks-oriented, and include some very neat photos of one of the players, so hopefully you'll be able to check it out.