Preseason Action

You can read my story about last night's preseason game, in which the Bucks lost 4-3 to the Rio Grande Valley Killer Bees, here. I somehow managed to not attribute the second quote to Coach Ruskowski, but Jeff Bes was not the one who said all of what ended up bunched together.

For those of you who can't access that story, here are the quotes I got from Ruskowski and Bes, who was serving as head coach behind the bench last night:

Ruskowski
I got a lot better idea today. There were some guys who really surprised me, and there are some guys we have to work on defensively. Defensive coverage was something we were really lacking. But we only really had one afternoon to practice on it, so we’ll practice on that (tonight) and as the weeks go on to make sure we’re tight, tight, tight. I saw some guys that impressed me and some guys who let me down a little bit, but that’s what exhibition is all about. I liked the majority of what I saw.

My French kid, Benny (Benjamin Dieude-Fauvel), did pretty well. I saw a big hit by (Ian) Clarke, I thought (Tomas) Sample played very well today - he made the game simple, but he made it effective. I thought my first little goalie (Gerry Festa) played really well; he was square to the puck.

Bes
It was a good test to have the guys in a real game, the physical contact with a lot of surprises. There were some guys we thought would do more who probably didn’t, but all in all, I really thought the effort was there, the emotion was there. The things we can improve on are mistakes that were made that we can work on in practice.

It’s do-or-die time. We have one game left, and we have a lot of guys left here in camp. Now it’s just a matter of them going out there and proving (you can do) what you need to do to make the club, and I want them to make our decisions really hard. I think that’s what will happen (tonight).


Ruskowski and I spoke about a few other things, and he noted that two of the goals scored were knocked in off rebounds and not really the fault of the goalie. He said he'll start Kyle Gajewski tonight and have Dan Spence suited up to come in if necessary.

The Bucks will close out their preseason schedule with a game against the Corpus Christi IceRays at the American Bank Center, which will begin in about 20 minutes. You can check out the pre-game notes and Bryan Benway's preview for that, and I will update the blog as much as Pointstreak allows throughout the contest.

Players on the lineup for tonight who were not yesterday are defensemen Cody Hamilton and Jarred Mohr, forwards P.J. Corsi and Lance Monych and Spence.

Igor Agarunov and Mike Looby, who were inititially expected to play last night, did not and will not tonight, either. Bes, Adam Rivet and Darryl Smith were not intended to play either game and will not. As mentioned yesterday, Bes and Smith will be behind the bench tonight.