Tuesday Update

After attending practice this morning, I can safely answer a question asked yesterday by letting you know Brent Cullaton is not in Laredo.

Turns out the loss the Buffalo Jr. Bison suffered last week was not of the season-ending variety, so Cullaton's team is competing at the Junior-A Nationals in Massachusetts this weekend.

Coach Ruskowski said Cullaton will be here "shortly" and that he is excited about what the veteran forward can bring to his team.

"Brent has a different perspective of the game now," Ruskowski said. "Just by him coaching in the juniors in Colorado, we talked a lot during the summer and the winter time, and we threw different ideas at each other, and I think he has a different perspective of the game now as a coach, and I'm excited for that because when Brent Cullaton wants to play like Brent Cullaton can, he's a dynamite hockey player. Any line he plays on is going to be a whole lot better."

Lines are something I was wondering about with Cullaton rejoining the team, as playing him on the top line would require breaking up the Jeff Bes-Darryl Smith-Sylvain Deschatelets trio that has been doing fairly well since Deschatelets arrived.

The three of them are still together in practice, but Ruskowski said he's not sure what he'll do when Cullaton gets here.

"I don't know," he said. "I'm going to have two games to decide who's playing well with who and do I change things around. Obviously, if we're winning, I don't know if I'll do anything, to tell you the truth. But if we're not playing as well as we should, then obviously the changes will be effective."

Robin Richards was also not at practice, but Ruskowski said he will be arriving in Laredo this afternoon after flying into San Antonio earlier and practicing tomorrow.

As far as adding amateurs goes, Ruskowski has a few specific players he is looking into, but they are still playing for their respective collegiate and junior teams at this point.

The Bucks considered themselves lucky to capture the third seed for two reasons - to rest injured players and to get extra time to prepare for the Allen Americans.

As far as injuries go, Ruskowski says things are looking better than they have in a long time.

"Some guys still have sore groins or whatever from playing so many games in a short period of time, but in general, we're not bad," he said. "It's one of the better scenarios we've had. Hopefully the good Lord doesn't say, 'Okay, time for Wave 15 to come in of injuries.' But we're also looking at a couple junior players, amateur players to maybe come in and help us out. But they're still in the playoffs, the guys that I'm interested in, so we'll find out probably within the next week or so if they're available. If they are, I'll probably like to bring them down to start getting them familiar with our systems so if they do get a chance to play, they're familiar with what we do and can step to the plate for us."

Preparation is something he believes they'll need a lot of after allowing four goals to the league's worst team in that 7-4 win over the Wichita Thunder in Saturday's regular season finale.

"Nothing away from Wichita, but they didn't really want it, and we didn't play our best hockey," he said. "Sometimes we have some bad habits, and that's the part I didn't like a whole lot. We scored seven goals, which is nice, but these last couple days, it hasn't been a really hard practice, but it's a scenario where we went over a lot of things that we need to go over and changed a couple things up. Any little advantage that we can get, we'll take, and at this point, getting seven goals and winning the game was great, but I don't think we should have allowed four goals. I'm hoping that we can prevent the other team from doing that. They struggled a little bit in Wichita the whole season, so allowing them to four goals was something that I didn't want to happen. But it did, so we have to rectify that problem."

Those problems stem from defensive coverage, which Ruskowski has had an issue with all season long.

"We're working on our defensive coverage, what our third guy high does, having more patience with the puck," he said. "Sometimes we're so regimental with what we do that we don't play the game by feeling and by seeing and adjusting to it. Just, 'This is what we have to do, and we can't get away from that.' But if they take it away, we have to have options. We're trying to get more options for the puck carriers, for them to move the puck and create more chances to score."

Conversely, Ruskowski liked a lot of what he saw the night before in a 4-3 overtime loss to the league-best Odessa Jackalopes on the road.

"I saw character in Odessa," he said. "We were down 3-1, and obviously the game didn't really mean anything, but we came back to tie it and lost in overtime. We took a penalty, and obviously we have to be more regimental and conscientious about taking penalties, especially in the playoff scenario, because any goal could be the game-winning goal against you. I thought they showed character there."

The team was on the ice for an hour and a half today, and Ruskowski was immediately looking over notes as soon as they came off. They have been watching tape every day and will continue to do so for the rest of the week.

"We're watching video more than we ever have before, especially against this team," Ruskowski said. "Today, we'll watch more of it, to make sure we're prepared and know exactly what they do, or what they have done, against us. They may change it, but if they didn't, then we're hopefully going to be prepared to see what they have."

One thing the Americans have is a great transition game, and Ruskowski wants his players to be able to take that away during this series.

"They flood the one side, and we have to be conscientious about that," he said. "Their transition from defense to offense is terrific, it's terrific. As soon as they get the puck, when it's turned over between the blue line and the red line, they're on the offense right away. We have to make sure of our changes, make sure that there are no turnovers and be prepared, if there is a turnover, to jump on defense as quickly as possible because these guys are dynamite from defense to offense. They have talent, they pass the puck well, they're strong in the corners, and we just have to be stronger or outnumber them in the corners to get possession of the puck."

Tomorrow's practice will be the last one at the LEC before the series against the Americans begins on Friday, as the team will depart for Allen tomorrow afternoon.

There will be a watch party for Friday's game at Hal's.

The two first-round series began last night, with the Texas Brahmas getting a 5-4 overtime win over the Corpus Christi IceRays and the Missouri Mavericks earning a 4-2 win over the Mississippi RiverKings.

Former Buck James Hiebert scored the game-winner for the Brahmas, who now only need to win one of two straight home games to close out the IceRays.

Back to the current Bucks, goaltender Pier-Olivier Pelletier earned the Performance of the Week award for his efforts in the Bucks' all-important 3-2 shootout win over the Brahmas on March 14.

Speaking of awards, here are the links to the other CHL honors that have been announced recently:

Most Outstanding Defenseman

Most Outstanding Goaltender

Most Valuable Player