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Vinny Saponari and Nick Bonino Postgame Transcripts

Transcriptions by Arielle Aronson/DFP Staff

Vinny Saponari

On what he thought the message Parker was trying to send to him was:
We need to find our identity as a team, and I think myself too. I know that I’m a power forward and a guy that needs to bring energy and play physical and grind in the corners, stuff like that. I’m usually a pretty consistent both-ways player. He just said that he wanted me to get back to the basics basically, and just be the solid player I was all last year.

On his experience as a baseball player:
You always mess around in practice, you know, hitting pucks around and stuff like that. It’s just a fun chance to hit one like that in a game. Always a little luck there, too.

How the game compares to other BC comebacks:
Any BU-BC game is never over, no matter the score. Going into the third period, we knew they were going to come out. Their forwards are fast and energetic. We knew it was going to be hard to keep the lead so we just did our best to pull out a win.

On being able to get the win despite losing the lead:
That’s definitely a direction we’re trying to go in –– find ways to win. We knew once they got the first goal, they’re going to be coming at us hard. They got a nice bounce off the boards on their tying goal. We were just saying to each other, it’s a tie game now, it’s still up for grabs, it’s not like we lost or anything. So, we just have to stick to what we’re trying to do and hopefully things work out, and they sure did.

On the change in the forecheck strategy sparking them in the third:
I think so, yeah. We went from conservative to aggressive. It was more of just the mentality of not sitting back, I think, that really kept us going. He didn’t want us to play conservative and just back off and not go at them at all and let them come at us the whole game. We changed it up to aggressive so that we would keep going at them.

On how they are creating turnovers:
Just moving our feet. We’ve been trying to play fast all season, and that’s one thing that we’ve been trying to work on, is our pace on the forecheck and the backcheck. I think every line, all four lines were going today, and when we have that going, we’re a pretty hard team to break the puck out against.

Nick Bonino

On how the power play moved the puck for the winning goal:
Yeah, moving it pretty well all night. I think early on actually, we were kind of taken aback by how quick they were coming at us. They didn’t give us any time especially on the boards and at the point, so we were trying to get it in front to Vinny. At the end, we figured out just stretch them and settle them down, and once we did that we were able to get some pretty good looks and just get the puck to the net. Luckily that last one hit a stick and went in.

On if he tipped the winner:
No, that one went right off of the D’s skate.

Was the pass toward him?
I think so, yeah. That’s something Colby does really well. He’ll see me and I made eye contact with him there. Nothing real bad can come out of that, you know, throwing it towards the net. Today we got a good bounce. I mean, if it didn’t hit a skate it was right on my stick and I would have had a tap-in, so either way that was a great play and good would have come from it.

Attitude on the bench after BC tied it:
We knew the only goals we were giving up were goalmouth, and that’s just individual assignments that we just need to kind of bear down on. But we were happy with the way we were playing. We felt that the last game against them at Fenway, we kind of sat back on our heels and played to preserve the win instead of going out and getting it. Tonight, we were happy with the way we played in the third. They got some jumps, they’re a real quick team and when their forwards get cycling, it’s really tough to stay with them. But guys bore down, guys got their guy before they were looking. Coach really harped on that, you know, getting the guy’s stick and then looking, being swivel-headed. So that was something we focused on, and we thought we played more to win tonight instead of not to lose.

On his goal:
BC is a really good team at getting the puck out of their zone on the penalty kill. They know how to put a four-foot pass to a close guy to ice it instead of trying to bang it out of a pile. That was a play they had. They won it clean on me and Bavo wasn’t too happy about that, I guess. But they went to chip it to the guy right next to him and it went right over his stick. Their far D was in the far corner, so I looked up real quick and no one was in front of the net. Their goalie showed poke-check really early, so I figured the five-hole would be open and snuck it through.

On moving on from this game:
Put the results of this game behind us, but know that we have to do everything else the same. Come out hard, come out fast and really just play to win. We have to believe in ourselves. We know we can still do something with this season. We kind of have to prove it, prove it to ourselves now and prove it to everyone else.

On how much was left in the tank:
Plenty.

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