On a night when the Admirals were missing 5 regular skaters and were outshot in every period, they found a way to beat Grand Rapids and improve to 6-1 in their last 7 games. (Game report is here)

The star of the night was undoubtedly Stephen Werner. The Admirals rookie scored two goals, including the game winner midway through the 3rd period.

Of course, in an attempt to be contrary, Coach Lane Lambert felt Mark Dekanich deserves the nod.

"He was excellent tonight. He was the star of the game for me," said Lambert

Dekanich did stop 29 of the 31 shots he faced. And this comes one game after Dekanich was pulled after giving up three goals in 57 seconds (and 4 total) Sunday evening.

"I only pulled him to try and change momentum," said Lane. "The goals that he let in weren't bad goals. There was a little bit of bad luck, and some missed assignments by our guys. I couldn't really fault him for any of the 4 goals against he let in."

Who else did the coach feel played a great game? His defense, for one.

"I thought Yonkman was terrific tonight, especially in the 3rd period when we needed some veteran presence. He was very very physcial and very hard to play against." (Yonkman did in fact play terrifically, and deserves not to be called "Wonkman" for one day.)

In fact, Lane had good things to say about most of his defensemen: McElroy, Sulzer, Matheson, Deitrich, Franson, and even Laakso and Ford, who are injured. They were all mentioned by name after the game and given praise.

Except one.

Tim Ramholt was mentioned by name...but for the wrong reasons.

"I'm still trying to get a good read on Ramholt. There's things I like in his game and there's things I don't like. Some of the things I don't like are, I think his play is a little too casual for me. He's gonna have to bump that play up because with nine defensemen here he's gonna be finding himself in the stands."

Read that again if you have to. Having interviewed hundreds of coaches over the years, I can tell you this: THIS DOESN'T HAPPEN. Coach Lambert has called out Tim Ramholt. Make no mistake about it, Coach Lambert wants to send a message to Tim Ramholt. And unless something radical happens...Ramholt's days in Milwaukee are numbered.

Now - back to tonight's game. This win was important because, due to a variety of injuries of various severity, the Admirals were without:

• Scott Ford
• Andreas Thuresson
• Ryan Maki
• Geoff Peters
• Teemu Laakso

Ford's injury is still considered long-term, although he may not miss the entire season as originally speculated. Peters has an ankle sprain, which are notoriously pesky. It's unknown how long Maki, Thuresson and Laakso will be out. But Coach Lambert knows he needs an answer to that question tout suite.

"We really have to assess tomorrow what our manpower situation is gonna be both at forward and defense for the weekend. I'm not gonna continue to go with seven defense and eleven forwards. It's not gonna happen. So we're either gonna have to get somebody back from injury or we're gonna have to bring someone in. It's plain and simple. We can't continue to these guys the amount of minutes we've been playing them and last the long haul."