Couple Quick Things

I didn't get time to type up all the quotes today, but just wanted to share a few things quickly before I run away from the office after an absolutely horrible deadline rush.

First of all, as you may have guessed, Sylvain Deschatelets' cap hit is quite a bit higher than that of Ryan Ford, so the Bucks will now only be able to carry 18 players on their active roster at a time.

I assumed that would be the case, but Coach Ruskowski confirmed it today, saying only players taking pay cuts would change the situation.

With that in mind, someone's going to be leaving Laredo when Maxime Lincourt comes off the injured reserve, if Ruskowski doesn't choose to let go of Lincourt to prevent cutting a guy who has been playing.

Lincourt was eligible to come off the IR as of yesterday but will not actually be doing so anytime soon, as his upper-body injury is still nagging away at him.

He did skate at practice today, though, as did every member of the team who isn't on at least the 30-day IR.

First time I remember that happening in a while, honestly, as Jeff Bes and Paul Elliott usually take healing days alternatively, and Adam Rivet missed practice last week.

But they were all there, they all skated a lot, and they practice a lot of passing.

Today was mostly technique drills, nothing too game-like, and Ruskowski said he'll get more into that stuff tomorrow.

I will not be at practice tomorrow, but I'll let you know if I hear of anything happening.

As Bryan Benway mentioned on his blog, a couple of the players' parents are in town and were at practice this morning, and apparently Curtis Billsten's folks took him and Eric Giosa up to S.A. for the afternoon. Guess that is a pretty popular Laredo travel destination.

One last, rather random thing, before I go: The Bucks ended practice today with a shootout, as is usually the case at least once during a full practice week, and I kept track of the goals just in case anyone would be curious about them.

They were scored by Igor Agarunov on a wrist shot that rang off the post past Kevin Desfosses, Jeff Bes on a floater that beat Pier-Olivier Pelletier glove side, Jarred Mohr on a slapper from the left circle past Pelletier, Bes on a nice toe drag move to beat Desfosses and Mike Looby on an ice-level shot that creeped by Pelletier glove side.

Ironically, Bes scored on both goalies in the shootout but could not do so in juice boy, and though I had to leave the stands to talk to Deschatelets before the game ended, his reaction coming off the ice leads me to believe Bes lost in his first time participating in quite a while.

Oh, and Ruskowski was just as pleased with the performance in Saturday's win over the Texas Brahmas as fans seem to be; he thinks that's the way the guys need to play the rest of the year if they want to get back to where this franchise has been.