Both teams are still battling for a playoff spot, but the Bucks (28-19-10, 66 points) are a bit closer than the IceRays (26-24-8, 60 points) right now.
They still can't clinch tonight, though, as Bryan Benway's press release explains, because the Rio Grande Valley Killer Bees (24-5-9, 57 points) have gone on a bit of a hot streak as of late and need to lose a game before a single Bucks' win can get them into the postseason.
Heading into tonight's contest, the "magic number" for the Bucks is four, meaning if they win tonight and the Killer Bees lose tomorrow, they're in, and if they can string together two straight wins, they can get in on their own.
Coach Ruskowski and Jeff Bes said yesterday that special teams will be the key to tonight's game and that staying out of the box is a big priority for the team.
Bes also explained just how important it is that the team not just make the playoffs, but make sure they beat out the Texas Brahmas (31-22-5, 67 points) for the Southern Conference's third seed:
"That’s our focus right now," he said. "I’m sure it is for Texas, too. It’s our playoffs right now. We’re playing off for that third seed. We’re doing everything we can, but we have to take it one game at a time.”
Bes actually broke it down a bit further than that, saying the team needs to try to win every period, and even every five-minute segment, of every game left on the scheduled. Obviously, that starts (again) tonight.
The Brahmas are also in action tonight, hosting the second-place Allen Americans (38-15-5, 81 points). I'll update on that game in addition to the one at the LEC in my game blog tonight.
As I mentioned would probably be the case yesterday, Kevin Desfosses (10-11-2) will be in net for the Bucks tonight. He just led the team onto the ice for warmups, as Kevin Beech (9-5-2) did for the IceRays.
Despite the cold that kept him out of practice yesterday, Pier-Olivier Pelletier (6-4-2) will be on the bench as the backup for Desfosses tonight.
Defenseman Mike Looby, who is day-to-day with an upper-body injury, is not on the ice.
Ruskowski told me yesterday that if Looby was not able to play today, he would just use five defensemen unless they got too tired. He actually thinks they play a bit better when they're getting more time on the ice like that, so we'll see how things work out tonight.
You can read the aforementioned press release and my notebook from today's Times for a little more on the game, and for the stats and all that jazz, you can check out the pre-game notes.
Once the game begins, you can follow it here or on Pointstreak, watch on CHL-TV or listen on Imagen 94.1 FM.
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