Game Day No. 34

Now that all the transactions from the past few days have been posted on Pointstreak, it seems Curtis Billsten came off the IR on Wednesday and Kevin Desfosses was signed to his five-game deal on Tuesday.

Evan Schwabe's IR stint has been made retroactive to Jan. 9, the date of the Bucks' last game before the All-Star break and obviously a few days before he suffered his lower-body injury.

Since that was all time off, the dates don't really matter, but I just thought I'd mention that.

Meanwhile, as an anonymous commenter noted, the Springfield Falcons are currently carrying three goaltenders on their roster, with Andrew Penner only inked to a professional tryout. He got the start in their game tonight against the Syracuse Crunch, which you can follow here.

I'd say the only way Jean-Philippe Levasseur comes back to Laredo with Devan Dubnyk up in the NHL is if Penner wins his first few starts and the Anaheim Ducks pressure the Falcons to keep Aaron Sorochan as their backup so Levasseur can get more playing time.

Those of you thinking Coach Ruskowski isn't paying enough attention to this situation should know he has made many attempts to contact everyone involved, but the more they blow him off, the more he realizes they just don't care about his stake in this.

If the look on his face when I brought up Levasseur yesterday is any indication, he's far more frustrated by this than you are, but there's not really much he can do considering Levasseur was never technically the Bucks' property in the first place.

Gerry Festa, another goalie whose name might ring a bell, was signed by the Missouri Mavericks yesterday. Festa was cut, along with Dan Spence, in favor of keeping Kyle Gajewski on the Bucks' roster at the end of training camp and will be playing in his first professional game whenever the Mavericks choose to utilize him.

Anyway, Desfosses will start for the Bucks (15-11-7, 37 points) tonight as they face the Rio Grande Valley Killer Bees (16-13-4, 36 points) at Dodge Arena in a game that will decide who holds the fourth-place spot in the Southern Conference.

The Killer Bees have some guys who can always seem to score against the Bucks, and if the All-Star Game was any indication, Sean Muncy is really coming into his own in this league, so the Bucks are going to need some goals out there tonight.

Schwabe wasn't a guy who ever really got much attention, but he had 34 points in 33 games in the first half and had points in nine of the Bucks' last 12 contests, so someone else is going to need to step up in that department.

You can read more about tonight's game in my preview, Bryan Benway's preview, Brian Sandalow's preview and the Pointstreak pre-game notes.

We'll be getting a lot of high school basketball calls tonight, so I can't promise much in terms of game blogging, but I'll do my best.

You can follow the game on Pointstreak or Sandalow's blog, watch on CHL-TV or listen on Imagen 94.1 FM for more consistent updates.