Because the Bucks' 3-1 win over the Texas Brahmas ended fairly late relative to my deadline last night and players jumped in the showers immediately thereafter to prepare for the jersey auction, I was only able to talk to Coach Ruskowski.
Here's what he had to say:
On the overall effort: I hope we left a good impression on the crowd because we’d sure like to have them back. Every time we have a good crowd, we play a lot better. This may not have been our best performance, but it was good enough to win, and it’s a good hockey team out there that we beat. It was surprising that all the goal scoring was in the first period, and after that nothing happened.There were some guys on our team who really struggled, and there were some guys like (Todd) Griffith who scored today, which really helped us in the offensive zone. We just have to play a little smarter. Going into the third period, we’re ahead by two goals, and we start taking penalties? We should be drawing penalties, not taking penalties. That was unfortunate, and we need to be smarter than that. Hopefully we can learn from that, even though we've done it before, we have to learn to control ourselves and control what we have to do to be successful, with being disciplined and not taking penalties.
On finally being able to keep a lead: It was our goaltending. He played fantastic again. He played really, really well, and I was really happy with him. Every time he couldn’t see the puck, he made himself big, and when you make yourself big, you block more of the net. That’s exactly what he did. Right now, he’s hot; I just hope he stays hot for a long, long, long, long, long, long time.
On all the scoring happening in a short span: There’s really no explanation for it. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't With the team they have, only letting them score one goal in the first period, then keeping them off the board for two periods, especially with all the penalties against us, that was a pretty good feat for us. Our penalty killing was excellent, absolutely terrific. They did a tremendous job. We got some lucky bounces where guys were going to get the puck and it bounced over their stick or it bounced and they couldn't get a good shot off, so we were lucky the good Lord blessed us, and hopefully He will continue to bless us down the road.
On the power play: Not so good. We've got into a situation where we have more confidence. We just make the same plays over and over again. We're not creative, we're not moving around; there were some guys open for a quick pass, but we didn't seem to see them. We're just trying to shoot on net or go back door where there's not a guy wide open. We have to be more conscientious and more aware of where the guys are on the ice and try to get them a good pass.
On facing Corpus tonight: I think, first of all, we have to get it out of our minds that they beat us five in a row. That's one thing we're going to emphasize. We’re going to go at them and hopefully get the good bounces and the good Lord with us so we can win another hockey game then take it on the road.
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