Current Situation

Talking to Coach Ruskowski after yesterday's 5-4 loss to the Tulsa Oilers brought to light a few more issues the Bucks are currently facing, which include injuries being played through due to more severe ones requiring other skaters to sit out.

The Bucks' stretch of six games in eight days could not have come at a worse time, as two games into it, they're already too battered to survive a whole 60 minutes.

Ruskowski gave me a lot of quotes about the situation - including Cody Hamilton walking out on the team, Kris Tebbs doing the Bucks the favor of playing a few games for them, and Jay Holladay spending about 12 hours in transit to get to the LEC just in time for his first game since Nov. 7 - and I used almost all of them in my story, which turned out to be quite a book.

Due to that fact, I'm just going to copy and paste it all here:

Despite holding the lead for the majority of the game, the Laredo Bucks saw their winless streak continue on Sunday with a 5-4 loss to the Tulsa Oilers.
Laredo (13-8-6, 32 points), which was playing two men shorthanded for the second straight game, dropped to 0-3-1 in its last four contests.
“I just don’t have enough manpower,” Bucks Head Coach/General Manager Terry Ruskowski said. “We have more guys in the stands than on the ice. We have guys who are playing and playing their hearts out, but they’re injured. We played our hardest, we just ran out of gas.
“We had no more to give, especially after playing last night, and playing with eight forwards and four defenseman, it’s just not going to work. We have to get people healthy, we have to get people in here in a short period of time because we don’t have time to waste.”
Laredo scored first when Justin Styffe banked the puck into the net off Tulsa goltender Trevor Cann, and the Bucks took a 1-0 lead into the first intermission.
The Oilers (14-12-1, 29 points) wasted little time getting on the board in the second, with Aaron Davis tying the game at 1:58 on a shot that bounced off a Laredo defenseman into the net after goaltender Kris Tebbs made the initial save.
Neil Trimm gave the Bucks another lead at 11:42, immediately following a fight between Styffe and Tula’s Tyler Fleck, and Jeff Bes made it 3-1 just 18 seconds later.
Before the period could end, the game was tied again, with Jeff Gumaer’s first professional goal and Sean Erickson’s power-play tally rallying the Oilers.
“We took some unnecessary penalties, they scored on the power play, and that really killed us,” Ruskowski said. “We have to play smart because we’re shorthanded.
We can’t take unnecessary penalties, and we took unnecessary penalties, and that’s what happens.”
The game took another turn when Evan Schwabe skated in on Cann and put one in the net for Laredo 5:53 into the final period, but T.J. Caig tied it up one last time at 11:55 when he jammed a rebound past Tebbs.
Tulsa scoring leader Rob Hisey got the game-winner 5:02 later, wrapping around the net to send one past Tebbs from between the bottom of the right circle.
The Bucks pulled Tebbs with 51.6 seconds left in regulation but couldn’t capitalize on several faceoffs in the Oilers’ zone to recover from their only deficit of the game.
“The bottom line is, we ran out of gas,” Ruskowski said. “The guys gave all they had, and when it came to the end, they had no more to give.
“I have to give Tulsa credit; they played pretty hard, they’ve got some talent, they move the puck pretty well, and obviously they can score goals.
The win, only the second for the Oilers in the past 11 games, was their first four-plus goal output since a 7-6 loss to the Colorado Eagles on Dec. 1
Saturday’s game was also a 5-4 loss for Laredo, that one in overtime at the hands of the Corpus Christi IceRays (10-14-4, 24 points).
The Bucks were able to add one man to their roster on Sunday in defenseman Jay Holladay, but lost forward Curtis Billsten to a nagging lower-body injury, keeping them in the same predicament.
“I feel sorry for him,” Ruskowski said of Holladay. “He got up at 3 in the morning, flew from Virginia Beach, Va., drove from San Antonio here just in time for the game, signed the papers, contract to go out and play. You can’t ask a guy to go out there and be on top of his performance when he’s like that, no practice or anything else. He hasn’t even played this year. But he’s American, and he’s a defenseman, and I needed someone in here quick.
“I thought he could do a job, and I still think he can do it if he gets some time to learn the system and know the system and get comfortable with these conditions.”
Billsten was questionable for Saturday’s night game and played but couldn’t take the ice on Sunday, while forward Maxime Lincourt has missed two straight with an upper-body injury and defenseman Jeremy Swanson has been on the injured reserve since Dec. 12.
“I’m on the phone all the time trying to find players to get in here,” Ruskowski said. “Right now, I don’t even care what kind of players they are; I just need bodies. It’s not a good scenario. You wish you had a week off here to get some people healthy, but it doesn’t look like even a week would help these guys right now, so I have to get guys in here right now. It’s a mess.
“We’re going to try to get some players in here to help us, but in the meantime, we’ll try to go with what we have and get everybody healthy.”
Adding insult to the Bucks’ very literal injuries, defenseman Cody Hamilton, a second-year pro, walked out on the team prior to its game on Saturday night.
“He just didn’t want to play here anymore,” Ruskowski said. “He just said he wasn’t happy here, and he quit, so he’s on suspension. Especially the night before a game, that put me in a really tough situation. He’s not a game-breaking player, but when he plays well, he’s okay. That hurt us, it absolutely hurt us.
“Now we’re shorthanded, and we had to dress guys last game that shouldn’t have played because they were injured, so now they can’t play because their injury flared up on them.”
Laredo is losing another player now, though he is one whose departure the team anticipated, as Tebbs signed with the Bucks just to help them out with this weekend’s games.
“It’s a temporary thing,” Ruskowski said. “He has to go back to Corpus because he has to start school, so he’s going to go back. He did a terrific job for me, he played really well. It certainly wasn’t his fault (on Sunday). Defensively, we just didn’t have the legs to catch up with their fresh legs, and they scored those types of goals that would never happen if we had guys who were fresh and ready to go.
“I’m trying to get another goalie in here in the meantime. It’s a process at work.”
Notes: Tebbs was 0-1-1 in his time with Laredo, making 37 saves on 43 shots faced. He allowed five goals on 33 shots on Sunday… Holladay was a minus-4 in the game and was on the ice for each Tulsa goal except the power-play tally. … The Bucks were 0-for-7 on the power play, failing to score on the advantage for the second straight game. The Oilers were 1-for-6.

Holy cow, that was even longer than I thought it was. But anyway, Ruskowski seems confident that things will get better once guys are healthy... the only problem is that might not be any time soon.

Billsten and Lincourt have both been nagged by their injuries for a couple weeks, and a couple other guys have been floating under the radar with ailments of their own.

Ruskowski is trying to get a new goalie in before the team's next game, but the fact that it takes place tomorrow isn't really helping him much.

As he noted, he just needs bodies as far as skaters go, and American ones are best because there's no risk of immigration paperwork holding up contract finalization.

Anyway, back to yesterday, you can read Bryan Benway's recap for a play-by-play-type description of all the scoring and more info on Holladay, who played 58 games (plus five in the playoffs) with the New Mexico Scorpions in 2007-08, 65 between two IHL teams last season and five with the Quad City Mallards earlier in this campaign.

The South Texas All-Star starters for the upcoming CHL All-Star Game at the LEC will be announced in about 25 minutes, so I'll be back to post about that in a bit.