Notes from practice

It didn't take Gary Graham long to mix up his lines. Today he went with King, Hauswirth and Firman; Auger, Fleming and Dunbar; Marino, Hughes and Lang.

``I like our balance still,'' Graham said. ``You look at the chemistry between Auger and Fleming and they just have to play together. I want to see how it looks this weekend.

``We have to be more willing to shoot the puck to give them a chance. We passed up some chances to shoot, and with how good the goaltenders and the defense are in this league, we can't pass up opportunities to create second chances at the net.''

Defenseman Jace Coyle is also going full-bore, pairing with Nick Tuzzolino. He's got a booming slap shot and is one of the smoothest skaters on the ice.

Mike Vaskivuo is going to try to go full-speed tomorrow after skating half the practice today, and Kyle Follman is just starting to get back onto the ice. Both of them have groin/hip problems.

Kaleigh Schrock was out sick today.

It's been interesting to watch Graham run a practice. He was having them work on some team defensive drills today and you could tell he was correcting the mistakes that led to goals on Saturday night. There was a lot of emphasis on communication and the forwards taking the proper man coming back so the defensemen could just react instead of waiting to see who would pop open. Every drill Graham designs serves a distinct purpose of something he's seen that the Komets need to work on. I've also seen him use a series of drills to build up to a specific drill at the end of practice to work on a specific thing. There's a lot of teaching, a lot of reinforcing going on, and everyone is paying close attention. Very fast-tempo practice, and when practice is over, there's still 90 percent of the team hanging around afterward to work on individual things.