Hello everyone, I hope everyone had a great night, I'll start tonight's blog with the run through of game 3. There was a lot of excitement surrounding the atmosphere inside the Civic Centre tonight for our first ever home playoff game. We came out a little to flat for my liking and a lot of the players liking and the Mavericks were playing like it was a must win. After a decent scoreless first we killed a couple penalties off but weren't very happy with it. The second started out similar until the Mavs broke the scoreless tie with a Power Play goal that I would like another chance to play different. When we were quickly sent to the penalty box again things didn't look good, but a great individual effort by Jon Pelle shorthanded tied the game for us and we never looked back. Scoring two more before the period end and adding another in the third we sent the fans and ourselves home happy up 3 games to 0. The boys know we played the last 27 minutes tonight that we need to play for 60 and will be doing that come Friday.

A special happy birthday goes out to Derek 'Gunner' LeBlanc, he turned a very young and spry 24 years old today. With his birthday Derek was hoping to sprout a little more facial hair for the playoffs, "I woke up this morning and went straight to the mirror to check, I'd like to say I didn't care when I noticed that my beard still struggled, but I'd be lying." When I offered Gunner the option of having a beard like myself but the back hair comes as a package deal he was quick to turn down the offer.

In other news, were sitting at my house right now just finished a post game meal and a BL, and in walks Cody Bostock with news that Canada had just purchased half of Hawaii!!!! I know outrageous right!!! Hard to believe he goes on to tell us about the website sympatico.ca that had this story so we checked it out of course with all of us here being Canadian we had to know the story. While reading the story it tells us that Canada spent 2.3 Billion dollars and that the U.S. did it to create income for the debt that they're in. They had Quotes from native people to the islands, the story also went into detail about the customs buildings that were going to be built and where the border would be through the islands. Sounds outrageous, and it was, when we finished the article there was a link at the bottom of the page that when clicked on the headline read APRIL FOOLS!!! We all accepted that we were dumb enough to believe the article, not only that we were very close to checking Air Canada flights to Hawaii hoping for some kind of deal to go visit our new province. I think it would have just been an addition to the province of Saskatchewan, it only makes sense.

Hello everyone, I'm blogging from my bunk on the Powerhouse just hearing the count to make sure all the players are accounted for and we can head home. We came into Missouri and were very successful winning both games and heading back to the Civic Centre up 2 - 0. Saturday nights game was a great game for both teams with us only up a goal after 2, then our ridiculously skilled forwards took over in the third like they can and we won the first ever Rush playoff game. It was a great team win and the boys were pretty jacked up in the room afterwards with Danny Battochio winning the hard hat award, that kid would win it every night if that was possible, who needs feet when he's always standing on his head for us. After a lovely post game at Outback Steakhouse the boys got some rest and prepped for game 2. Going into the second game you keep the mindset that "you knew you had to get one game now lets go get two," Missouri had something else in mind coming out and outshooting us 10 3 in the first. The boys stayed with it with Les Reaney doing his thing and opening the scoring. After they tied it up we were heading into the 3rd with another chance to win a game on the road, a combination of Bats great saves some solid team defense, Scott Wray ripping the bottle off the net we won a game that we may have been out played, we survived and did what it takes to win in the playoffs. Game two's hard hat award went to a very deserving Blaine Jarvis who's quote on the helmet will be tough to beat when he wrote, "Pushing the Pase," after being questioned wether he miss spelled pass or pace he wasn't sure and struggled to fix it as everyone on that side of the room made sure he didn't get away with it. When asked about his typo Jarvy questioned his education from Bemiji State, "I spent 4 long years there, and being out of school for the last two years has definitely hurt my intelligence, I have no excuse other than I was so excited to receive the helmet I couldn't think straight." Finally on the road after a quick stop at QT gas station the majority of the boys are busy crushing a milk shake that is one of a kind, "It's unbelievable," says Scott Wray, "Just throw your favorite flavor in the machine and the most glorious treat returns for you." It's a good thing for us that the person who enjoys this amazing treat the most is Timbus, so you know we're not stopping anywhere else.

Leaving you now with only 11 hours of highway to go, hold on, just cursed by my bunk neighbor to the North Brenden Hodge when he told me, "Fritsy you have to take into consideration the time that will be added on when our bus breaks down." After some choice words back to him I knocked on wood and I'm sure the best bussy in the league will have us home on time.

See you at home Rush fans and remember, Keep Fit and Have Fun!

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What was looking to be a very uneventful day of killing time at the mall turned out to be the exact opposite for us today. Last night we found out who we would face in round one as I'm sure most of you know, so after a 10 o'clock practice in Independence Missouri, the bus dropped us off at the mall to have lunch, maybe some shopping, mostly just to kill some of the day. That's when one of us changed from just another food court junkie, to a hero. His name is one Riley Weselowski. Unfortunately I was not there first hand, luckily for me my road roomy and D-partner was just feet away from the excitement. After enjoying a fine meal from Panda Express, Wessy was looking to take care of his sweet tooth with an oreo blizzard from DQ, I assure you even though Wessy likes to indulge in the odd sweet sugary snack he is one fit athletic specimen. According to sources three Bemiji alums were there so it has to be true, when Cody Bostock and Blaine Jarvis turned there heads to check out a cute .... ahhhh never mind, it's when they turned back they noticed Wessy with his arms around an older heavier set gentleman attempting to preform the heimlich maneuver, as the gentleman helped position the hands in the correct spot for Wessy, he went on to preform the act and helped the poor man get his breath back. When the dust eventually settled from all the excitement and the panic settled the three Bemiji Beavers made sure the man was OK and waited until the Paul Blart wanna be mall cop arrived at the scene on his segway. With the man still a little disoriented the two women he was with came over and thanked the fine young gentleman for there concern and quick thinking to help there sugar daddy out. when asked about the event, Wessy had this to say, "I wasn't looking for any thank you's or hero status, I just made sure nobody was dieing on my watch today. Was I nervous? no not really, because I knew deep down inside that this man was going to live to enjoy another day." There you have it, the soft spoken Weselowski never seizes to amaze, some wear capes, he wears number 24.

In other news Derek LeBlanc received a new doo, when several of his teammates highly recommended that he change his very stylish, just woke up out of bed look, into a very retro mullet. I had a chance to speak with Jon Pelle a close friend of Gunners and one of the main supporters to this lifestyle change. "After a while of convincing Derek to get the mullet he said the only way he would do it is if Chris Falloon and Dave Grimson agreed to join him. So we went over to Grimmer and asked him - absolutely not - he replied. Then we asked Looner who quickly replied - not a chance. next thing we knew Derek was sitting in the chair at Master cuts receiving a fine Kentucky Waterfall."

I assure you the events of the day are PRETTY much exactly what happened.

Thanks for reading today and until next time, Keep Fit, and Have Fun.

P.S. I have received several comments on my grammar and several type-o's i had in the first post, forgive me for that as I am a Tisdale Middle and Secondary School grade twelve grad and thats my only excuse. I'm not sure of the excuse of my proof reader who missed all the mistakes as he is a HARVARD....yes HARVARD grad. I'll try my best to limit my mistakes for the future.

Hello everyone and welcome to the Rapid City Rush's playoff blog. This is Luke Fritshaw and i'll be composing most of the posts on this page with add ins from other players on the team. The main reason i wanted to do this is for the fans, you're a huge part of this playoff season and with this i hope to keep you posted on a few behind the scene events that most may not hear about, comments on each game and fun interviews with each player through-out what we hope to be is a very long and successful post season for us.

That being said i'll get started, one thing you'll notice with the way some guys talk, they use a lot of hockey slang, which i'll do my best to translate to make sense.

Wednesday March 24,

The playoffs unofficially begin for us today, at 6:30 pm we'll be boarding the Powerhouse (bus) and start to make our way south without an exact destination in mind, we're still awaiting our opponent but need to get on the road so we can practice tomorrow and prepare for Rapid City's first ever playoff game. For those of you who don't know on our trek home from Odessa Tx, we were 12 hours into our trip home when the Powerhouse took a hit it struggled to bounce back from, after Sam our trainer to a quick look at it he came to the conclusion that Powerhouse could not go on and needed a replacement. A charter bus was the savior of the day, piloted by a fine gentlemen named Aurthur. 12 hours on a bus then a break down can bring out the worst in a human, i assure you, when curse words were flying around a little to carelessly on the charter bus (not directed at anyone) just bursts of frustration, Aurthur kindly asked us to stop all the profanity, and like Colt King, we all quickly shut it for our bussy. Of course it did not stop us from throwing The Big Lebowski into the DVD player which, for those of you who haven't seen it, could set records on how many times an F-Bomb can be used in a movie. I'm glad to say that after being put on a quick 2 day IR the powerhouse is back and action and Timbus (Powerhouse Pilot) is back in the corner saucing the biscuit.