Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Bucks Land Levasseur in Net

The Bucks have signed goaltender Jean-Philippe Levasseur, on loan from the Anaheim Ducks organization, to fill the second goalie spot on their roster.

Levasseur is expected to serve as the team's top goaltender, with Kyle Gajewski as his peer/backup.

He had been playing with the ECHL's Bakersfield Condors, who got stocked up with the Ducks' top goalie prospects, before Coach Ruskowski managed to get him.

Levasseur arrived in Laredo at 4 p.m. to sign his contract and will be with the Bucks as they hit the road for Bossier City, La., tonight.

The 22-year-old Quebec native was a seventh-round NHL draft pick in 2005, and Ruskowski mentioned his playing time in the AHL, over 50 games, as an encouraging number.

Obviously, he brings in some more experience than Gerry Festa and Dan Spence, both rookies, had, but what do you think of this move? And how do you feel about keeping Gajewski rather than Festa or Spence?

I'm sorry for the delay in posting this, but the move had to be approved by the league before anything was official.

UPDATE: I had this post ready to go before the Bucks sent out a press release, so I published it as soon as they did and failed to include the link to that. Here it is.

RANDOM: As pointed out by reader and goalie fanatic Jorge M., the picture the Bucks sent out with their press release is actually of Jean-Sebastien Giguere. As evidence, here is the Bucks' photo:
























And here is the photo of Giguere's mask used for the Sports Illustrated goalie mask feature:
























Of course, the fact that the guy in the picture is wearing Giguere's number is another tell-tale sign, haha.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm ok Gajewski, he looked ok in the first game but heard he did better in the second. I'm curious as to why Salvis was let go? But what can you do the coach knows what he's doing and has.

Jorge M. said...

Experience beats potential.

I didn't get to see the pre-season game in Corpus or practice, it looks like the right call.

On another (funny) note, I'm almost sure the picture on the Bucks website press realease belongs to JS Giguere. At least that's his mask and number.

Interesting connection with Coach and the Anaheim organization, in 2006 the Bucks got Nathan Marsters (+) on loan from their AHL affiliate in Portland.

Joy Lindsay said...

You are correct! I never even bother with those pictures because they're usually too low quality for us to use, but I checked it out when you said that, and that is definitely Giguere's mask.

Anonymous said...

looks like a great pick up. Joy can they call this guy up or take him away from us?

Manny said...

Like Jorge said does Roscoe know someone from Anaheim or something second goaltender to be loaned from them (Nathan Marsters) The only bad thing was he didn't last here too long just playing 7 games before getting called up again by Anaheim's Affiliate Portland.... With this guy in i think we are set in the goalie position we needed this experience in net like we did last year with Centomo...