Game Day No. 52

The Bucks begin their fifth straight 3-in-3 tonight in Allen against the playoff-bound expansion Americans.

Though they have had an odd habit of beating the best teams they face, the Bucks have yet to get a win against the Americans, against whom they are 0-1-2, including 0-1-1 on the road. Both of those OT losses were actually in overtime, not shootouts, by the way.

Anyway, the Bucks are 25-17-9 (59 points) overall heading into tonight's game, while the Americans are 35-12-4 (74 points).

The Bucks stand two points behind the Texas Brahmas (28-19-5, 61 points), who play three games this weekend beginning tomorrow. So, as seems to be the case a lot lately, the Bucks could move into a tie for third with a win tonight but might not stay there for long even if they do.

This will be the last of three straight road games for the Bucks, who then play three in a row at home, starting tomorrow.

This weekend's promotions/events include rivalry T-shirts tomorrow, when the Bucks host the Rio Grande Valley Killer Bees (21-23-8, 50 points) and the Give Blood, Play Hockey drive on Saturday, when they host the Texas Brahmas.

After practice on Wednesday, I talked to Coach Ruskowski about the three teams the Bucks will face this weekend and the importance of the weekend overall.

Here's what he had to say:

On what he expects to see from the Americans: A quality team that moves the puck, that can score, play defense and their goalie plays very well. He's a pretty good goalie. We just have to make sure our specialty teams work efficiently because their power play is pretty good. They have talented players, and if we frustrate them, stop them before they get started, it's going to be a huge advantage for us. Frustration, on a skill team, could play a pretty big role for us. We frustrate them, and now they're trying to make different passes, we intercept them and get goal-scoring opportunities, and if we score on them, it's a huge advantage for us. But we just have to be a good, patient team. Hopefully they make mistakes, and hopefully we can make their mistakes count as goals for us.

On continuing to get points against the Killer Bees: We just have to keep working hard against them knowing that if we work hard, we have an opportunity to win, and if we have an opportunity to win, we have to because points are hard to come by, and points right now are very important for everybody. We have to concentrate and focus on what we have to do. We can't worry about what happened in the past, we have to worry about what's happening in the present. That means working hard and preparing ourselves to do the best we can.

On trying to beat the Brahmas: It's huge, it's absolutely huge. This weekend is very important because all of the teams are either two points ahead of us, which is Texas, so we have to make sure we do a good job against them, then of course we have Rio down and trying to go against Allen, a really good team. It's a very tough weekend for us, there's no question. We have to be focused, make sure we're rested up, and we have to do the things for us to be ready to play the best we can play. That means my job is to make sure they're rested - that means they work hard during the games - and prepare them to play the best they can each shift of each period of each game we play.

On what they worked on in practice this week: I wanted to go over, to make sure everybody's on the same page on our traps, our neutral ice forecheck, and our forechecking period. We added a little bit different to our power play breakout just to throw a little curveball to see how exactly they respond to what we have to do, what we can do, to change it up anyway.

On this weekend's expected goalie situation: I'll probably start Kevin (Desfosses) on Thursday, then Pelts (Pier-Olivier Pelletier) on Friday, then Kevin on Saturday again against Texas. We'll see how that works. We'll do it that way, but if things change, then they change. It changed last weekend because I put Kevin in against Corpus. I wanted to see exactly how Pelletier would react to me pulling him, and he reacted in a positive way and played pretty well against Rio and I was happy with those kind of results.

I will not be able to get to a computer during tonight's game, but I will try to post at least the score and stuff when it is over.

As noted previously, there is a watch party tonight at Hal's Landing. Those of you who don't feel like watching the game there can follow it on Pointstreak, watch on CHL-TV or listen on Imagen 94.1 FM.

And for now, you can get more info on the weekend from Bryan Benway's preview and the Pointstreak pre-game notes, which say new center Sylvain Deschatelets will be wearing No. 41.