Sunday 1/30/11

We were coming off a pretty good stretch and opening the week’s games with a trip to CenturyTel to play the Mudbugs. It’s always a big game between us two teams – it’s been a pretty big rivalry. We started off the game pretty good but then we gave up a couple of goals and it kind of fell apart from there. We didn’t have a very good game and we ended up losing 6-2. It was a tough loss for us.

We came back home and then we were off on Wednesday, just because we were short bodies. We had practice on Thursday and then it was off to play Rio Grande Valley, a team that works very hard and plays good systems.

We came out on Friday night and didn’t play our best game. We gave them a lead and then we battled hard; we battled back hard in the third period to make it a one goal game and then ended up giving up an empty net goal, so it was a disappointing loss for us. We didn’t play very good, but it showed good character from us, to show them that we could come back and we were almost there. But it just proves that you can’t give a team a lead like that.

We came out again on Saturday night against the same team, Rio, and played a better game. We ended up winning 5-4. They’re a team that’s at the bottom of the standings right now, but they work really hard and the standings aren’t really a good indicator of what they showed us. After that, we had a nine-hour bus ride back to North Richland Hills to get ready for a 4:00pm game today against Fort Wayne.

We came out really strong against the Komets; the first four or five shifts, we were all over them. We ended up getting a goal in the first shift and had the lead and then it kind of just fell apart from there. I don’t know if the guys were tired, but we just didn’t play well. We didn’t do what we needed to do. Wayne Savage played a great game. He kept us in that game the whole time and gave us a chance to win. Honestly, I think we were lucky to get a point out of the game, which was good for us – to get that point and not give up both points at least. But again, we didn’t play very good.

Coming off of a rough week, we have to head for Odessa tomorrow and try to get back on track and have a good game.

We’re getting to the point now where, obviously we’ve had a couple of rough games this week, but we know down the stretch here every point counts. I mean, the standings are so tight that every point counts and you can’t afford to give up any points. So, going to Rio on Friday, we really needed to go down there and win both games. It’s not an easy task. Like I said, they work hard and they’re a good team, but we’ve got to continue to win games and take very point. We can’t take any points for granted. We can’t take any night off because one point can mean a lot at the end of the year because things are so close.

The guys are excited - they see where we’re at. We’re right there in the standings. We have a few games in hand on a couple of teams, so if we can put our guys together and put another stretch together like we did last week, we’ll be in pretty good shape. We have a few injuries, so it’ll help us a lot if we can get some guys back and get playing with our full line up and just keep rolling; try to get it going and get things back on track.