A Great Night All Around

Jan 30, 2010- (The views expressed in this blog are the views of Bryan Benway,and may not be the views of the Laredo Bucks organization). Oh Hi Friends. I am writing to you from the press box at the LEC about four hours before the Bucks host the Corpus Christi Ice Rays and then head on the road afterwards. What a great night just 24 hours ago in this building.

There's not too many times where you can look back on a night and say that it was very memorable and you were proud to be a part of it. Well for myself and a lot of other people last night was one of those nights.

First off a big thank you to the 5,126 fans who came out last night to help the Bucks donate $10,000 to WINGS and to witness another stellar effort by the home team. Regardless if the Bucks won or lost the game last night we were all part of something special. With the $10,000 donation to WINGS the Bucks helped save another person's life from breast cancer. I can't say it any better than that.

I'll get back to that in a bit but first let's talk about the big win.

The question leading up to the game was whether the Bucks could carry the momentum from thier 2-1 road trip into this weekend's games at the LEC and in Odessa. Well we saw the first part answered last night and it's a resounding yes. Last night the Bucks played well again and beat the defending CHL champs for the second straight time. This win was big because it virtually puts the Bucks ahead of the Brahmas right now for third in the South. Laredo and Texas each have 45 points with the Bucks having two games in hand and a 2-1 record against the Brahmas. The two clubs meet four more times (three at the NYTEX sports center). Those games all will be huge.

No doubt the biggest reason for the Bucks win last night was Kevin Desfosses. He stopped 37 of 38 including a ton on the penalty kill to improve to 4-1 for Laredo. I lost track of how many times Desfosses was sprawled out in the crease and stopped two or three attempts by Brahmas players in the crease. In my postgame interview with Desfosses he told me that the Bucks will get the third spot in the South this season. Yeah, he actually said that. I love his candor and honesty.

Desfosses will start again tonight against his old team. He stopped 31 of 32 shots the first time he faced the Ice Rays but was robbed of the win due to some shoddy officiating (is that safe to say i'm not sure). Let's see how he performs against Corpus tonight. More on that in a bit.

Another guy who contributed quite a bit was Todd Griffith. And by contributed I mean both positively and negatively. Griffith scored two first period goals (one on the power-play and one shorthanded) to give the Bucks the jump but also took two separate four-minute double minors in the third period that could have cost the Bucks goals.

It's funny that just the other night Griffith introduced me to his girlfriend and said that I don't talk about him much on the air because he hadn't scored that much. Well I certainly talked about him quite a bit last night.

It's nice to see Griffith chip in on the offensive end but the penalties hurt and El Presidente Coach Rosco was the first one to mention that in my postgame interview with him.

Rosco came right out and said that he was very unhappy with all of the penalties that his team took last night and he said they need to be smarter.

I thought it was a great game and a great atmosphere last night. After the game I chatted with a couple of players during the jersey auction and they told me how energizing it was to play in front of a big crowd. You guys don't realize how much that helps the Bucks players when there's over 5,000 people in the building.

Rosco was happy with the penalty kill as Laredo held Texas 0-for-11. That probably gave Dan Wildfong a sleepless night. Rosco was not so enthralled with his teams power-play who went 1-for-10. I felt the team had some decent power-play chances but Rosco disagreed (he's entitled to that he's the boss).

I felt the Bucks were on the ropes in the third period though as Texas dominated play in thier end due to a lot of penalties and man advantages.

Could a reason that the Bucks came out flying last night be that there was a new intro song prior to the game? Actually that may be true as a lot of players told me that they were really pumped up when they heard "Enter Sandman" last night rather than the other intro song. And the Bucks won with "Enter Sandman" so they should stick with it until they lose. Not sure if that will be the case tonight or not we shall see.

I had a lot of fun at the jersey auction last night chatting with a lot of people about the Bucks, the Brahmas, and life in general. That's one of the best parts of the job is seeing all of those smiling faces after a win and a great night at the game.

Moving on.

Say what you want about the Bucks organization but last night was a memorable night. Sure the game did not sell out (which is very disapointing) but we still donated the money to WINGS and that shows a lot of class by our owner Glenn Hart.

Let's talk about tonight's game real quick.

What will it take for the Bucks to break this five-game winless streak against the Ice Rays tonight? An act of God possibly? You never know. But the Bucks should be very glad not play against Kevin Nastiuk tonight as he has left the team to join millions of David Hasselhoff's fans in Germany. If you didn't know David Hasselhoff's music is very big in Germany.

Kris Tebbs should get the start tonight for Corpus. Laredo saw Tebbs once in a Ice Rays sweater way back on October 23rd when they lost in Corpus 4-2. Nastiuk played in the next nine games against the Bucks and shut them out twice.

The Ice Rays play a very physical style against the Bucks and Laredo does not seem to know how to combat it sometimes. We will see what the two teams game plans are for tonight.

Right after the game the Bucks will hop on the bus and travel eight hours to Odessa to play a 4pm game tomorrow at the Jack Shack. Talk about your rough schedule holy cow! The Bucks will arrive in Odessa around 6am tomorrow and have to play 10 hours later against a team who will have had home games on Friday and Saturday. Oh by the way the Jackalopes are the number one team in the league. What a big test tomorrow for the Bucks. I'll blog from the shack prior to tomorrow's game. I will have more on tonight's game as well as the ride and plenty of other things.

Enjoy the game tonight!

Until next time,

It will be a hot one in the old town tonight!

GO BUCKS GO!