Just in case I get caught up answering high school calls by the time I finish transcribing later, I'll post some quotes from Coach Ruskowski about this weekend first.
I talked to him about the games in reverse order of occurrence, because I wanted to ask about the way things went against the Texas Brahmas first, so bear with that as you read:
On winning all three games over the weekend: Especially after the way we played against Corpus on Wednesday – it was just kind of disgraceful how we played then – the guys just bounced back. It seems the more adversity we get, the better they play. It’s just amazing because we played really shorthanded against Arizona and really shorthanded against Texas, in their own building, and I thought they played really well. They played smart, moved the puck well, they conserved their energy; it was one of those times they skated a mile and got 100 things done so they didn’t have to skate 100 miles to get one thing done. They played a little bit smarter, they moved the puck, we had great goaltending and timely goals. It was just a good combination.
On the play of goaltender Pier-Olivier Pelletier in the wins: I was really impressed. The accolades he got, being Goalie of the Week, I think he totally deserves that. He’s been playing really solid hockey for us, game in and game out as of late. He’ll start tomorrow, we’ll give him two days off, then he’ll come back against Wichita. I don’t want to kill him, but I still want him to stay sharp.
On Sunday's 3-2 shootout win over the Brahmas: It was incredible. We had big saves to start, and we just played one of those solid, smart games. It’s a game of mistakes, and when we made a mistake, we had Pelletier bailing us out or the defense making a good play. When they made a mistake, a couple of them, we capitalized on them. It was nice to see that one because I really didn’t think on the better end of the stick, especially with nine forwards and four defense playing against a team as good as Texas. That was a tough, tough game, and the guys came through. I’m very proud of them.
On the play of the Curtis Billsten-Eric Giosa-Maxime Lincourt line in Saturday's 5-3 win over the Arizona Sundogs: It’s pressure off me, but it’s also pressure off other lines when a line can do that when it’s maybe more pronounced as a checking line. For them to score four goals, it’s a huge asset. Any time you go into playoffs, you find one line or one guy who people usually don’t look to to be a hero come up as a hero, and we’re hoping we have two or three of those people going into the playoffs who step up and be heroes for us. It’s huge to have three lines that are capable of scoring but also capable of playing good defense. They have to play good defense, then the other end will take care of the goal-scoring opportunities. I thought they played very well, and I was proud of that line.
On Friday's 3-2 shootout win over the Rio Grande Valley Killer Bees: It was kind of a chippy game. We had that Fletcher kid out there, and he was hitting everybody. Actually, he hit Bennefield, and I think he hurt him again. But he kind of got them off their game a little bit; they were more trying to get after him, get after that physical part instead of playing the game the way they should. Then (Jeff) Bes just made a nice play, passed across to Smitty in the goal mouth with a wide-open net, and Sylvain (Deschatelets) made a nice play behind the net, it was just a nice bam-bam goal. Then we just hung on from there. The amazing thing is, we scored three shots, three times in a row against (Andy) Franck (in the shootout), which is kind of unheard of. It was nice to see that happen; we hadn’t had that happen in a long time. Then, going into Texas and doing the same thing, scoring in the shootout, it was a good week. It was a fun week, it was a nerve-racking week for a coach to see what’s going on, but I’m proud of the guys. They played pretty well, I just hope that now they don’t think that the season is over. We still have three more games left, and so does Texas, so we’re going to have to make sure we win at least two of these games out of three to make sure we stay in the third spot.
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