Today's Notes and Quotes

The Bucks left Laredo this morning around 10 a.m. to drive up to North Richland Hills, where they will play the Texas Brahmas in another battle for the third-place spot in the Southern Conference tomorrow night.

Contrary to what I had initially heard, the team will not be practicing when they get to the NYTEX Center later today, but Coach Ruskowski did say tomorrow’s morning skate will be a bit more intense than the average one might be to make up for two days without any ice time.

Forward Evan Schwabe, who suffered a lower-body injury in the All-Star Game on Jan. 13, will return to the lineup tomorrow night, less than a month after being hit by a puck made him the unlucky recipient of a setback in a contest that should have been a bit more fun for him.

With the active roster currently full, Ruskowski is going to have to get someone off it before Schwabe can be put on it, and that move hinges on whether or not Serge Dube will stay with the team.

Obviously that means a decision regarding Dube needs to be made before tomorrow night’s game, and I’ll update on that as soon as I hear anything.

The Bucks (22-15-8, 52 points) currently have third place all to themselves, but they are only one point ahead of the Brahmas (23-17-5, 51 points), so they must win tomorrow if they want to keep the spot outright.

An overtime or shootout loss by the Bucks would result in another tie for third between the two teams, while a regulation loss would put the Brahmas back ahead in that race.

Tomorrow’s game is the start of another 3-in-3 for the Bucks, who will make the long trek from North Richland Hills to Hidalgo for the first game of a home-and-home against the Rio Grande Valley Killer Bees (19-19-7, 45 points) at State Farm Arena on Saturday.

The weekend concludes on Sunday, when the Bucks host the Killer Bees in an afternoon game at the LEC.

Ruskowski and the players were available to the media as they packed up the bus at the LEC this morning, so I was able to talk to Ruskowski, Darryl Smith and Schwabe about a few different topics.

Here’s what they had to say:

Coach Ruskowski

On the team’s current play: We still need work in different spots, there’s no question. Once we get the injuries back, we’ll have a bit more speed, a bit more skill involved, and I think that will hopefully be a positive. And I think that once we do that, we’ll be okay, and I think that we can win hopefully more than we lose.

On getting Evan Schwabe and Igor Agarunov back: Well, I think it takes the pressure off the other lines that are trying to score all the time and put the pressure on themselves. I think these guys are good hockey players. They’re on the power play, on the penalty killing, on their own shift, so these guys will take the pressure off the other guys. And hopefully they’ll come back and score, because that will really take the pressure off and give us an opportunity to have three lines that can score, which is exactly what I want.

On making roster room: I’m waiting on one situation to happen, and we’ll see if it does. If it doesn’t, I have to put a guy on waivers by tomorrow and put Schwabe on the roster.
On tomorrow night’s game: It’s a very tough place to play. It’s a small building, a cramped building, an older building, and it’s a tough place to play against them. What we have to do is weather the storm right off the bat because I know they’ll be coming out strong. Weather the storm, then get back into what we have to do to be successful and take the puck to them as much as we can and try to force them to make errors. And obviously when we do get opportunities, because we don’t get many good opportunities there, when we do get opportunities, we have to make them count.

On the importance of the weekend: Every game is a big game now. You can’t emphasize bigger and bigger and bigger, because that’s what it is. It gets bigger and bigger and bigger every game we play, and every win that we have to get keeps on getting bigger and bigger and bigger because now it’s the playoff stretch run, and we’d like to get as high as we can to make the playoffs and go from there.

On what needs to happen against the Killer Bees: All I ask my players is to play as hard as they can and let the chips fall where they may, and if we play as hard as we can, like I’ve said before, hopefully we’ll win more than we lose. But it’s an opportunity for us to hopefully have the opportunity to win, so we just have to play hard. All I ask of my players is to play as hard as they can, and hopefully they’ll do that.

On the penalties: I really thought we had the problem solved when we were in Odessa because we really lost that game because we took unnecessary penalties. I really chastised the guys, and I thought we were getting to the point where we wouldn’t do that. But obviously, it didn’t happen because they still took unnecessary penalties. But, on the other hand, some of the penalties that were called, I didn’t think they were penalties, so you can’t really chastise them a lot because I thought they were kind of iffy penalties. When Adam (Rivet) was going into the corner, they both bumped and one guy fell; I didn’t think that was a penalty. And then when (Curtis) Billsten hit the guy at the blue line, I thought that was just a good, solid hit, and they called him for charging. I try not to be on the guys as much, but I look at the penalty and see if it was a real, solid penalty or an iffy penalty. We have to know that anything borderline, the referee is going to call it against us, so we have to be more conscientious about those kinds of plays.

On practice: Practice makes perfect. Unfortunately, with our situation, I really thought that we needed the rest more than we did the practice. Once we get to next week where we don’t play ‘til Friday, obviously we’ll play Sunday afternoon, we’ll have Monday off, then we’ll get back on Tuesday just showing them one thing for about a half an hour and make sure everyone knows what we’re doing. Wednesday, the same thing, though we may do a different thing, maybe forechecking, neutral ice forecheck, maybe do our power play, so everybody knows exactly what they’re doing because we just went through that in practice. I want them to know exactly what, if we’re changing things, make sure they know what the changes are, not on the board, but on the ice.

On plans for tonight/tomorrow: I just feel that with the injuries and what we have now, just to drive up there and have a good meal, then we’ll have a little morning skate. We’ll have kind of a tough morning skate, just to get the guys prepared, get the lactic acid out, get them prepared for playing that night.

On goaltending this weekend: I haven’t thought about it. I probably would go with (Kevin) Desfosses on Friday and Sunday and then with (Pier-Olivier) Pelletier on Saturday, give the guy a rest because it’s a long trip from Fort Worth to Rio, so this goalie will be more fresh and ready to go. Then it’s a short trip from Rio to here, so we’ll let Kevin go from there.

Darryl Smith

On the current situation: I think, as a team, we’re really starting to come together. We’ve realized coming down the stretch it’s going to be pretty tough, and there are a lot of teams really close, so every game is like a playoff game now. I think everybody is really starting to realize that, and I think the push to the playoffs is pretty evident that it’s on.

On tomorrow’s game: I think it all just comes down to who wants it more. That third position in playoffs is huge. Nobody really wants to play that mini-series between fourth and fifth, so I think if we can stay in third, it’s only going to benefit us. But we know they have a good team, so I think it all just comes down to whoever works the hardest.

On breaking away from the Killer Bees: I think with Rio, we just have to keep it simple and do our jobs in our own zone. I think if we do that, they usually get frustrated and send an extra guy in, so then the offense will come. But basically with them, they have a lot of speed, and we just have to find a way to slow them down and just capitalize on our chances.

On getting Schwabe and Agarunov back: I think it’s going to be huge. Just to have another guy like Schwabe, who’s really got that offensive mind, and Iggy’s just one of those power forwards who does his job to a T. Both of those guys are huge assets to the team, and getting them back, I think it’s only going to help with the morale of the team and have the guys heading in the right direction.

On the current morale level: I think the biggest thing was just getting by Corpus. I don’t know why, but the Corpus curse was alive, so just being able to knock them off and some of the teams that we’ve been able to knock off here in the second half like Colorado and Rapid City, things like that, I think the confidence is slowly starting to build. Once that starts building like it is, I think when you have confidence, you can pretty much do anything.

Evan Schwabe

On getting back in the lineup: I’m excited. It’s been a long four weeks, and I haven’t done a whole lot, so it’s just good to be back with the guys on the ice with them, so it will be exciting.

On his health: I’m not 100 percent, but good enough to play and good enough to help the team. I’ll go out and do what I can and do what coach asks me.

On the current level of competition: I think the games are going to be a lot tighter. Every point is huge, and we want to try to get third place, and obviously tomorrow Texas wants to get third place, so it’s just going to be a battle from here on out. Obviously, of the teams that are battling for the playoffs, one of the teams isn’t going to make it, so you know everyone’s going to be giving it all they’ve got in these last 20 games here.

On tomorrow’s game: From what I hear, it’s a tough place to play. It doesn’t have the glitz and glamour of some of the other arenas in the league, so we just have to basically stick to a simple game plan and stay out of the penalty box, and we should be okay.

On coming back to a tightly-called game: I hope I can skate well enough where I don’t have to hook and hold and get penalties that way, so we’ll have to wait and see. You never know what you’re going to get with the refs sometimes, and just kind of play it game by game.

On what he’s seen from his teammates: I think we’re playing really well. You see flashes of it, and if we can just get more consistent, play 60 minutes. We’ve been playing one period here, one period there; that’s kind of hurt us a little bit. Hopefully we can put together full games, and we’ll be okay that way.

When I posted quotes from Rivet on Tuesday morning, I did not have them all typed up, so here’s the rest of what he had to say on Monday:

On closing out games in regulation: It gets bigger and bigger as each game goes by. You don’t want them getting any points. Sometimes you see the scoreboard, and two of the teams are playing each other, and they go into overtime, so they all get points. But against us, as well. When you get the opportunity to step on them, you have to do it, and the boys have been working hard. We’ve been shortmanned now for a while, it seems, and guys have been trying to get the job done, but we really have to buckle down and when we have the opportunity to close games out, we have to do it.

On getting players back: That will be big. Schwabie’s such a crafty player, he’s great with the puck, and he’s one of our older guys, mature guys, who can step in and control play very well. So when he gets back, he’s definitely going to help us out offensively. Iggy’s been, since he’s played here, he’s such a vital player. He’ll play defense, he’ll play forward, he’s strong on the puck, he works the corners well, and in important moments of the game that we need a solid player out there, we have Iggy out there, and he does a great job. So once we get those guys back, they’ll really help us out.

On the defense: You just have to play simple hockey. That’s one of (Paul) Elliott’s successes, that he keeps thing simple, he does his job, he doesn’t really go outside the box too much, he stays in his comfort zone and does a great job. Everybody just has to pull their socks up and do a job. He does a great job when he’s in there, and other guys just have to bear down and play tighter (when he’s not).

Obviously, that last topic was discussed with the possibility of Elliott being out of the lineup on Tuesday still looming, but he did play then, and he is expected to play this weekend.

As previously noted, Agarunov has been given clearance to come off the IR on Saturday, so he should be in the lineup that night.

Another roster move will be necessary before that happens, regardless of what is decided with Dube tomorrow, so stay tuned for more on that when things are cleared up.