From the Monsters Desk: Two against Rochester. Again.

The beloved Monsters [12-11-3] take on the Amerks [13-11-4] again this weekend in a home-and-home set. These two teams have faced off 4 times so far this season with Lake Erie earning a 1-2-1 record. Last week the LEM lost indoors to the Amerks, lost in a shootout outdoors to the Amerks and closed out the weekend with a shootout loss to the Utica Comets. The time has come to beat these guys.

This week's injury report has some good news for a change. Stefan Elliott returned Sunday vs Utica and CBC is reporting Joey Hishon expects to play tonight at Rochester (see article below). That leaves only Sgarbossa (ankle), Siemens (knee), Desbiens (broken ankle), Vandy (LBI), and Desjardins (LBI) on the known injury list. Good times!

As reported a million other places before SBN would let me publish this article, CBC did an interview with Joey Hishon this week about his struggles coming back from concussion. Also included were the facts that he has been out with a Hip Flexor injury, as he was earlier in the year, and that he should be in the lineup tonight against the Amerks.

Who's having fun?

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Looks like Duncan is. Siemens and Desbiens stopped by Fox8 in Cleveland to show off their Ugly Christmas Jerseys and to take on the Fruitcake Challenge.

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Watch the interview, various awkward moments like asking Desbiens about his accent and Duncan trying hard to act like he's thrilled to be sitting next to a perky morning TV hostess. Some good does come out of it tho', no knee brace for Siemans and Desbiens talks about having a broken ankle, but he thinks he'll be back after Christmas sometime.

The LEM crew put together a fun timeline of the trip to Rochester for the Frozen Frontier full of tweets and vines and instagrams.

For those of you still desiring an Ugly Christmas Jersey, the Monsters are doing an online auction of Sami Aittokallio and Brett Clark's sweaters that goes until Saturday night. (s/t to c6 and Cole for pressuring them into it)

This week's AHL power rankings from The Hockey Writers are out, our boys in Burgundy fall into 17th.

The gang from lakeeriemonsters.com have another interesting Getting to Know... article this week featuring Spongebob fan Trevor Cheek and the big swede Michael Schumacher, who oddly enough idolized Peter Forsberg rather than Mika Hakkinen while growing up.

Speaking of Trevor Cheek, Dennis Manoloff from the Cleveland Plain Dealer had a Q&A session with him for the paper's Off the Ice feature this week.

Schedule:

Friday at Rochester 7:05pm, radio on WKNR

Saturday vs Rochester 7:00pm, radio on WHKW, TV on WUAB

Links:

Team stats

AHL standings - Monsters now 3rd in the North Division

Preview from the LEM crew

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Random pre-game tunes this week:

Friday - "Pay the Man" from the Offspring

Saturday - "Sinking" by the Cure

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I'll be here tonight and tomorrow night updating and tweeting. Stop by if the site still works!

Pickard's such a hoot.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Great night at the aquarium nice seeing all the fans.very happy my second brother made an appearance too!! <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23heavyfish&amp;src=hash">#heavyfish</a> <a href="http://t.co/gM1MK5xz0G">pic.twitter.com/gM1MK5xz0G</a></p>&mdash; Calvin Pickard (@cpickard1) <a href="https://twitter.com/cpickard1/statuses/413133268184485888">December 18, 2013</a></blockquote>
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And Happy Holidays from Your Lake Erie Monsters!

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