Sorry for the delay, guys. Sometimes the internet gods like to shut down my blog server for maintenance overnight and we can’t get these things up as early as possible – but here’s what Karl Taylor had to say about last night’s game, picking up defenseman Luis Tremblay, and watching Brian Kilburg and Patrick Mullen leave.

“(Last night) we get up 5-0 and we don’t have a clue what to do. It doesn’t happen
very often. (Idaho’s) first goal, the guy punches it in the net – it
shouldn’t have been a goal – but they did a lot of good things to create
the opportunity, and you’re not going to get all the calls. The
officials have a tough job. Then (the Steelheads) try to mix it up, muck it up, get
penalties going and all that. That’s what you do when you’re down like
that. You’re trying to give yourself a chance to come back and they damn
near did it, so that shows you the kind of team they have.”

Scoring seven goals is the positive end, right?
“That was huge. We’re the lowest-scoring team in the league over the
season but right now, there’s no question we have to take that as a
positive. They’re the best defensive team in the league.”

Why start Mike Zacharias over Curtis Darling?
“We just felt Mike’s been doing really well in practice. Curtis has been
logging a lot of ice. Wednesday night, Curtis would be the first person
to tell you he struggled in Bakersfield. We just felt it was the right
decision. We haven’t used Mike a lot, haven’t really showed a lot of
confidence in him. I can’t fault him on any of the goals initially –
we’ll check on video – but for the most part I thought he did a really
good job. I thought he handled it very well. He’s a good goalie who’s
had a tough season, as far as getting the opportunities.”

What do you know about Luis Tremblay?
“We knew Luis from Wheeling. Back in my Reading days I watched him. We
had a lot of battles against each other. I think it’s safe to say the
two cities hate each other, and the teams don’t like each other too much
either. He competes hard. I was surprised to see him on waivers. The
timing was perfect – well, we lost Patty Mullen, got called up. We had
(Dan Knapp) on the IR. We were happy to claim Luis. I thought he did a
great job under very difficult circumstances – we had someone drive (to
Bakersfield) and pick him up. He went for a physical, came to the rink,
put his gear on and did the best he could.

“With some guys, they get into a team and there’s a lot of contracts,
they don’t get put into the right situation or it just doesn’t work out
sometimes. Sometimes there’s a player-coach conflict. That happens with
me, it happens with every coach. He’s had a tough start to his year, but
we felt we could pick him up. We’re excited to have him, and we look
forward to giving him more minutes.”

“We just got in a tough spot there. After (Patrick) Mullen got called up (to Manchester), I had to
cut a guy (Brian Kilburg) and another on IR (Knapp) and I’m sitting here
with five “D.” I was in a really hard spot, but I wouldn’t change what
we did. It just put us in a tough spot. Had to find someone. We got
lucky that Bakersfield decided to let Luis go.”

Why let Brian Kilburg go?

“Brian’s a big kid. We didn’t give him a lot of ice, but the last 10
games before we had to make a decision, he was playing his best hockey
of the year. We were proud of what he was doing. We thought he was
moving in the right direction. We didn’t want to make that decision, but
we added two pretty good players then we lost one. It’s kind of like,
‘wow, what do we do now?’ “

I’m guessing the plan was not for Patrick Mullen to play just one game here?
No, that was not the plan.

Was he supposed to be here the rest of the season?
I don’t know (how
long). But it was expected to be longer than what it was. That’s the way
it is. What can you do?