Alumni updates

• Do I really need to tell you how well Brian Elliott is doing? He picked up his 3rd win of the season last night in the Sens' 3-2 win over Washington. In his 5 games this season, he has a .924 SV% and 2.18 GAA.

• Jack Skille has been doing pretty well in Rockford lately -- last I mentioned, he had 3 goals and 3 assists for 6 points in his last 3 games -- but now you can make that 9 points in his last 5 games (not counting the 1/16 game in which he left the game early), as he added an assist in Rockford's 1-o win v. Toronto on 1/10 and a goal and an assist in Rockford's 4-2 loss v. San Antonio on 1/13.
  
  The Third Man In has a description of Skille's goal v. SA:
  

  Jack Skille got the IceHogs back into the game at 15:23 of the second period when he found a small space over San Antonio goalie Josh Tordjman’s left glove and shoulder. Treading up his trademark right wing, Skille snapped a wrist shot from the right face off dot to close the gap to 3-1.

  In those 5 games, he was +7 and had 25 SOG. And in one of the games (Rockford's 6-5 loss to Grand Rapids on 1/7), he had a season-high 12 SOG. Nice!
  
  Unfortunately, Jack didn't get a chance to score in what would've been the 6th game of his little streak (Fri 1/16 v. Chicago Wolves), as he left that game early with an injury. He has since missed the Hogs last 3 games.
  
  In 36 games with the Hogs this season, Skille has 15 goals and 19 assists for 34 points. He has already tied his point total for last season, in which he was 16-18-34 in 59 GP. He's currently 3rd on the team in points, but he's played 8 fewer games than the top 2 scorers.
  
  

• Jake Dowell hasn't been scoring a whole lot of goals this season, but he recently got some love on The Third Man In:

  - Despite just one goal to show for his efforts this season (he went 33 games without one), alternate captain Jake Dowell remains one of the Hogs’ most-consistent and sound performers. Obviously there’s disappointment that he hasn’t been able to provide much offense, but if there’s an injury to Colin Fraser, Adam Burish or both, Dowell should be more than capable of filling those roles in a replacement stint.

  The Third Man In also mentioned the following in a discussion of what to do with the Hogs' lines when Tim Brent returns:
  

  - Dowell is fine wherever you put him but he’s been better at center.
  
  - Dowell can be moved to the fourth line but I don’t see that as a permanent thing. . . . Peters is rolling his lines a lot more now than he was at the beginning of the season but he likes to use Dowell and the fourth line doesn’t see much more than a third of the ice that the second line does.
  

  Sounds like Dowell plays consistently well regardless of on which line or in which position he's put. It'd be nice if he had some more goals to show for it, but it's nice to hear that he's playing well.
  
  In 42 games this season, Dowell has 1 goal and 10 assists for 11 points. Last season, he was 7-10-17 in 49 GP.
  
  By the way, you can find some nice Icehogs game pics here. I've only looked at the top 2 albums, but there are some nice pics of Jake in there. (Skille didn't play in those games, so no pics, but I'd imagine there are some nice pics of him in previous albums.)

• Tom Gilbert seems to be doing well lately. I previously mentioned that Gilbert closed out the 1st half (41 games) of the season 2-16-18, +2. In his first 5 games of the 2nd half, Gilbert was 1-5-6, +3, and it sounds like his play has been picking up recently.
  It had been a while since he had last scored, so I was happy to hear that he got his 3rd goal of the season this past Friday in Edmonton's 3-2 win @ Colorado. And his play last night (2 assists) earned him 3rd-Star in the Oilers' 4-3 win over Columbus.
  
  (I really need to make a better effort to watch some Oilers games.)

• Joe Pavelski, whose Waterloo Black Hawks number is being retired this weekend, scored his 100th NHL point last night. (Thanks to bucky15 for pointing that out.) In 171 GP, he's 46-54-100. This season he's 6th on the team in scoring, with 13-19-32 in 43 GP.


• Matt Ford is back in the AHL, having been recalled from the Charlotte Checkers to the Hartford Wolf Pack. In his 1st game back with Hartford, Ford had an assist and finished +1 in their 3-1 victory @ Portland on 1/19. Ford started out the season in Hartford and was there for about a month (12 GP, 1-0-1, E) before being assigned to Charlotte. Ford is the top goal scorer and 2nd-leading points scorer for Charlotte (21 GP, 16-15-31) and by far has the team's best +/- with +19 (no one else is above +5). By the way, Charlottes's top points scorer (Mike Bayrack, 34 GP, 10-28-38) has played in 13 more games than Ford.
  
  Ford will be playing in the ECHL All-Star game tonight at 6 PM CST. The game is being televised live on NHL Center Ice (Channel 785 on DirecTV, Channel 626 on Dish Network). If you don't have NHL Center Ice, you can catch the game on b2 for free.