Yesterday's Cuts

It slipped my mind earlier that I was supposed to post Coach Ruskowski's quotes about yesterday's cuts today. You can check out my story on them, or read the quotes, which also include some info about the goalie situation, below:

“I don’t think there were any mistakes. With (Matt) McKeown and (Blair) Hawes, they were just alike. I couldn’t tell them apart on the ice. They skated the same, were the same height, had the same stride, they were off by two numbers on their numbers on the back. They were good at everything, but not great at anything, and that's what I told them. They were hard because they're good kids and they worked hard; they just didn't have that next level from junior. But I liked them. I thought they were good kids, really good kids. They're all good kids.

"(Nick) Williams came down on a tryout, and I think he knew he had to get a few more years under his belt professionally to see what professional is all about.

"(Drew) Kivell was a tough one. I really had him penciled in to make the team, but he had a tough camp. He struggled with some different things, a little bit with his weight. He was feeling down a little bit, not feeling well, but you have to go with what you see on the ice.

"(Ian) Clarke is a guy that really intrigues me because I really think he can play in our league. But he needs to have maybe one year in the Southern Professional league to find out what professional hockey's all about and get rid of the mistakes that he was making during camp. I know that he was nervous and excited. He's a good skater, and he's tough; if he could just learn how to play defense as a professional, I think he could be very successful. I'm going to keep an eye on him and see what's going on with him.

"(Kevin) Flather was the kind of guy that I think Europe kinda messed him up. He had some habits that it was going to take me too long to fix, and when you're starting in a couple days, you don't have time. You can't change the system for him, he has to change his system to match yours, and I just didn't think we would have time to do that.

"I'm going to be on the phone, and once I find out what's going on, I have to make decisions on goaltending and one more forward. It's tough. It's why I took a couple days; I've been thinking about what I have to do and what they have to do to be successful. It's just a tough decision.

"I thought (Gerry) Festa played really well the first game, then I thought (Kyle) Gajewski played really well in Corpus Christi. What'd he have, 20 saves the first period? Some of them were pretty tough, and he came up large, so that kind of gave me a good notice that he's capable now of doing what he can do consistently. It's still who to pick between Festa and (Dan) Spence, and that's why I kept them around a little longer to find out which one I'm going to keep."


As mentioned yesterday, Alexander Eaton was out of town for the crucial preseason games this weekend, and here's what Ruskowski said about cutting him when I followed up on that today:

"It was a situation where he was trying to juggle both coming here and going back for the wedding, and he left us at the worst time possible. He was trying to get out of it, but he couldn't get out of it and he came down here anyway. I got to see what he looked like, and he was a great guy. Really responsible, leadership type, but he just maybe didn't have the capability of making my team even though I liked his physical presence.

"Instead of flying him all the way back, then sending him all the way home, when he went home, he said, 'Call me before.' And I told him it probably wouldn't be to his best advice to come back down because the team's kind of already set. I wish he had played because he's a pretty physical player, but you make your bed, you sleep in it. Unfortunately he didn't play, so I didn't have the opportunity to see him (in a game), it was kind of a situation that he lost out on being a part of the team."


The Bucks officially announced Eaton's departure in a press release this afternoon.