Some Notes

The Bucks are in the air on their way to Colorado for a week-long road trip that will pit them against the top two teams in the Northern Conference.

The Bucks (16-12-7, 39 points) will face the Colorado Eagles (23-7-3, 49 points) on Wednesday and Friday, then drive over to South Dakota to play the Rapid City Rush (24-9-1, 49 points) on Saturday.

A few guys are obviously not making the trip out there, as Justin Styffe was placed on the 30-day injured reserve retroactive to Saturday and will have surgery to put a screw in his broken leg this week, Evan Schwabe is recovering from his lower-body injury in the All-Star Game, Maxime Lincourt is still a couple weeks from getting back on the ice and I'm pretty sure I didn't see Kyle Gajewski arriving at the LEC this morning, either.

Neil Trimm, however, will be playing this week after coming off the IR today. Coach Ruskowski said that Trimm hasn't really done much skating lately, but he is healed up and even having his body on the ice is better than nothing.

The Bucks are also looking to bring in some new help on their road trip and may sign a player just to have for those three games; I'll keep you posted on that situation.

Ruskowski said Gajewski should be ready to play again next week and by then he should have a better idea of what he wants to do with his goalie situation, but Kevin Desfosses is obviously making a strong case to stick around so far. He should play at least two of the games this week with three left in his five-game contract.

Some of you may have noticed something of interest other than the IR moves on the Bucks' transactions page today, as defenseman Cody Hamilton has been activated from his team suspension and waived.

Hamilton will be playing in the International Hockey League, and Ruskowski said he's letting him move on with his career but didn't want to allow that to happen right away because he doesn't think a player should just decide to up and leave a team with which he has contractual ties.

Obviously, that happened whether it should have or not, which reminds me that Lance Monych has started playing with his new team, the Heilbronn Falcons in Germany. I know most people said they didn't care where he went, but just thought I'd share that in case anyone does.

I don't know much German, but a quick glance over the team's site brought up a few familiar names in addition to Monych's, including those of former Rio Grande Valley Killer Bees defenseman Nic Dumoulin and one-time Arizona Sundogs forward Cory Urquhart, who you may remember as the man who lit up the 2008 playoffs.

Meanwhile, Jean-Philippe Levasseur picked up another victory for the Springfield Falcons last night, his third straight and third overall, in a 6-3 win over the Wilkes Barre-Scranton Penguins.

This was one of very few games in which his team outshot its opponent, possibly because a few key Baby Pens were up with the NHL club, but Levasseur still had to make 34 saves to get the victory and improve to 3-9-0 (Only shootout losses count as "ties" for AHL goalie records, and Levasseur's non-regulation losses have come in overtime).

Levasseur's goals-against average doesn't look horribly impressive at 3.40, but when you consider the fact that he's faced more than 30 shots in all but two games and his save percentage is nearing the .900 mark at .897, I'd say he's doing pretty well.

His game-by-game stats really show only one poor outing, and we can't really know for sure if that was the fault of Levasseur or the guys playing in front of him.

Devan Dubnyk hasn't been doing so well up in the NHL, but it seems the Edmonton Oilers will need to hold on to him for a while, especially according to this article:

Barring a trade, the loss of Khabibulin leaves Jeff Deslauriers and rookie Devan Dubnyk, who have been splitting the workload since Nov. 16, to tend the crease for the foreseeable future.

With that in mind, it's likely that Andrew Penner will be the first person sent down to the CHL if Dubnyk does return... so it's probably best not to get your hopes too high about Levasseur coming back.

As far as the Bucks' 1-0 loss to the Corpus Christi IceRays on Saturday, it seems the popular consensus is that sloppy play doomed the team more than some possibly questionable calls, but neither was really appreciated by Ruskowski.

Here are some of his quotes from my game story:

"I’m tired of hearing that (we can’t solve the IceRays). We have a problem with them, yes, but it’s because we don’t play well and because we’re shorthanded. This was one of the sloppiest games I’ve seen in a long time. We just didn’t pass well, didn’t execute well, and the only player who really stood out was our goaltender. Other than that, you couldn’t pick another guy that really stood out at all."

On Desfosses:

"I thought he played fantastic. He played great last night, too, so I’m really happy with him. He’s playing very, very well. I like the way he’s doing everything. He prepares himself, and he’s playing very well for me. If it wasn’t for him, the score would have been more lopsided than it was, but then you find out one of your other players probably broke a leg, so why not?"

On the injuries:

"It’s the most unbelievable thing I’ve ever seen. I have more guys in the stands than I do in the ice. It’s gotten to the point that I don’t have any place to put anybody because all our apartments are full (of injured players)."

On the dropoff in scoring from Friday's 6-2 win to Saturday's loss:

"It’s a Jekyll-and-Hyde team. I just can’t explain it. They play well one night, the next night, you can’t find a guy who stood out at all."

And on the officiating:

"You always wish the referees would get better as the season went on, but obviously that’s not the case. It wasn’t just him (Curtis Billsten on the eventual goal-scoring play); there were two other high sticks that went undetected. It just gets so frustrating when you see this happening against you, then a guy doesn’t even get hit in the face, he just pushes his head up, and your guy gets a penalty because the referee was in the wrong position and he just thinks it’s a high stick. Then we get high-sticked, and nothing happens right in front of him. It’s just frustrating to see that kind of effort from people who should be doing a better job."

On the subject of that stick to Billsten's face, here's what Greg Rajan posted on his game blog after talking to Justin Quenneville, whose stick did the hitting:

There were a few Laredo fans up in arms after the goal because Curtis Billsten took a stick to the face and was down at the Laredo blue line as Corpus went down the other way and scored. What happened was Billsten tried to lift Quenneville's stick and instead got hit in the face with it on the follow-through. That's not high-sticking as Quenneville didn't lose control of his stick and wasn't reckless with it. By rule, he has to be in control and responsible for his stick. You can't penalize him for Billsten lifting Quenneville's stick into the former's face. Given the chewing-out Billsten got from Terry Ruskowski upon his return to the bench, it appeared Rosco didn't care much for the Leveille-esque theatrics and Billsten not getting back into the play.

I asked Ruskowski about the fact that the goal was scored when they were a man down due to Billsten staying down at center ice, and Ruskowski said it was "just another one of those things," not calling Billsten out but not blaming the officials for that goal being scored.

By the way, Billsten's face appeared to be perfectly fine when I saw him this morning, so I guess the stick didn't hit him quite as hard as it originally seemed.

The IceRays also had some qualms with some of the officiating, specifically the elbowing penalty called on goaltender Kevin Nastiuk and served by R.G. Flath late in the game. Here's what Rajan posted about that:

Kevin Nastiuk now has a 130-minute, 13-second shutout streak going against Laredo. He had another strong night in net. A lot of the shots the Bucks got came from the outside, but Nastiuk was up to the task when challenged. He was plowed into late in the third and got that roughing minor for punching Darryl Smith. Here are Nastiuk's thoughts on the call:

"I didn't agree with the call. When the guy crashed the net, he drove his elbow into the back of my head. I was just sticking up for myself. If the ref's not going to protect the goalies, then someone has to."

Kind of reminds me Marc-Andre Fleury tackling Robert Nilsson last week because of the way the goalies both spoke about it after the fact. Obviously what Nastiuk did was not nearly as extreme as Fleury's body slam, though, haha.

Anyway, you can read Rajan's story for the Caller-Times for more on Saturday's game, which was a historic one for the Bucks-IceRays rivalry in a few ways, none of which favor the Bucks.

I spoke to Ruskowski, Jeff Bes and Adam Rivet before the team took off this morning, so I'll post some quotes from the three of them while I'm working on my notebook tomorrow. Shouldn't be anything new to report until then.