Monday, October 12, 2009

First Round of Cuts

The Bucks announced six cuts today, but seven players are actually gone, as forward Alexander Eaton left camp to go home and attend a wedding over the weekend and was placed on waivers today to prevent him from going through the trouble of coming back just to be cut.

Forwards Kevin Flather, Blair Hawes and Matt McKeown and defensemen Ian Clarke, Drew Kivell and Nick Williams were the first players released by the team.

The roster now stands at 22, meaning three more players must go before opening day, assuming no new players come into town.

At the Bucks' media luncheon today, I spoke to Coach Ruskowski about each player that has been cut and what he's looking for out of those who remain, so I will be writing a story about that for tomorrow's Times, and I'll post more about the cuts later or tomorrow.

Obviously at least one of you was surprised to see Flather go; anyone else find any of these cuts surprising?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

what did u think about the cuts? were u surprised that Flather was cut?

Jorge M. said...

I bet Ian Clarke was a really tough decision. With Rivet, Looby and Mohr...I'm sure there was not lots of room in the "D" department.

Joy Lindsay said...

Anonymous, I was not really surprised because he was trying hard, but there were a few things he didn't seem to get. Plus, he did fail his physical the first couple times he took it, and now that he's gone I can say that he had a hip injury and was apparently fairly prone to injuries in general. That can't be terribly encouraging with a young player who puts himself in a situation to re-aggravate injuries often.

I would have to agree with Jorge and say that Clarke was actually a surprise, though, as Ruskowski had spoken highly of him after the first exhibition game. Hawes and McKeown were both pretty "eh," Williams just couldn't keep up in this league at all, Kivell came into camp a bit out of shape, and Eaton never stood out then took off when he had his chance to be evaluated, so I really would say Clarke was the only unexpected cut of the bunch.

Anonymous said...

Joy what do you think of Josef Fojtik? Benway mentioned in his blog that he doesn't see how he fits into plans this season. I didn't know if he was talking about the wrong player because a lot of us were really excited about how fast he was and said to each other wow this guy is going to get a lot of those break a ways this season, he hustled the whole game worked hard every shift. You never know though we are just fans.