By Arielle Aronson/DFP Staff
Opening statement
I have a closet full of ties. I’ve got enough ties. Five ties. Are they all at home? Four of them at home? One’s at Merrimack, that’s right. Unbelievable.
Overall, I thought both teams played well. Both teams played hard. We knew exactly what we were going to get from Brown. We’ve seen them play. They’re a very good hockey team. I tried to explain to my team that they’re the Merrimack of the ECAC. They’ve been a cellar-dweller for a long time, now all of a sudden they’re a real good team. They’re playing very hard, and they’ve got enough talent to beat you but usually they beat you by outworking you and they certainly tried to outwork us tonight. But I like how hard we worked and how much we kept after them even down two-love.
We attempt 85 shots to their 41 so. A couple of bad reads gave them a couple goals, but they worked hard for them too. I liked the goals we got and I liked the guys who got them. Good to see Megan get another goal. Alex keeps scoring goals. Joey got a nice goal going to the net. We don’t get many of those. We got to make sure we get guys going to the net.
We were 1-for-7 on the power play but I liked, we had 15 shots, we moved the puck around, we were pretty sharp there.
You’re down 2-0 it’s good to get out alive I guess. When you’re up 3-2, you should win the game at home.
On the hit on Clendening
It was a late check I think. He went down and the first thing I thought of was there goes the junior team for the kid. We can’t afford to lose him but he won’t be able to play on the junior team the way he’s screaming now. He came back and played okay and he was hurting a little bit but he kept playing. I’m not so sure after the fact that we should have played him because now he’s swelled up so we’ll see how he feels tomorrow. The doctors who examined him didn’t think it was anything that he couldn’t go back out for us.
On Noonan’s game Saturday
I thought some guys hung on too long at times. I thought some guys tried to make big plays. The thing about Noonan is he always plays the right way. He’s not trying to be flashy, he’s not trying to impress people, and by not trying to impress people he impresses a lot of people because he plays the game the way it should be play. A lot of people are looking for a puck-moving defenseman who plays hard defensively and that’s him. And he can do things offensively. I always say if you look at how he keeps the puck, how he skates, how big he is, how fast he is, how well he handles the puck, you think he’s pretty good. But when you add it all up, it adds up much more than the sum. He’s much more than the sum of his individual parts, that’s for sure. That’s because he’s so smart and he’s very, very competitive. He’s one of the most competitive guys on our club if not the most.
On Warsofsky’s night
He’s the guy that runs our show, you know. I thought we had some chances that he could have gotten a few more assists on power plays. I still don’t know how Nieto’s shot didn’t go in. It was at the crease. I think it was Max that was there too. We had a couple of opportunities I think. And we missed the net a lot tonight too. We had to because they were diving in front of us I guess, but we had some chances where we shot the puck wide. But David, he’s the guy that stirs the drink around here, you know.
On Rosen’s line and first goal
He’s done very very well. We put him into the lineup because we thought he wasn’t going to break into the top six defensemen. He was the seventh defenseman and yet we thought he was one of our top 18 players. So we decided to try to try him at forward and it’s worked out very well. He gives us confidence defensively. He’s doing a good job at that end. He’s making some plays and he can skate. He’s a hockey player so he knows how to play. He’s learning how to forecheck a little bit which he’s never done before, but other than that he knows how to play hockey and he’s doing a pretty good job. It was nice to see him get a goal.
I thought his line played pretty well. They played three lines a lot and I was trying not to get our fourth line out there against their first line, but as it turned out I just kept playing them and we went one, two, three, four and they went one, two, three, so they had to catch that first line once in a while and they did a good job. I shortened the bench a little bit at times, but for the most part they took a regular shift. I thought Justin Courtnall had a good night too. He was out there playing physical and he played well. Wade Megan playing on the off wing, getting a goal, was nice too.
On Patrick MacGregor’s debut
I thought he played well. I didn’t notice him being jumpy, didn’t notice him being out of sync out there. He got caught on the power play, he was killing a penalty out there in the third period and then they got the man back and it was even-strength and we got exhausted and couldn’t get it out. He had a chance to move it a couple times and didn’t. You take away a couple of mishaps and I thought he played very well in his first game against a team that really can play pretty hard.
On whether they’ve practiced the 6-on-3
We haven’t practiced it yet this year. We got some opportunities there though. I liked the way we moved the puck. 5-on-3 and 5-on-4, I thought they did what we asked them to do as far as looking for the right pass, looking for the right shot.
On his patience with the power play
We have a whole season. If it’s 10% it’s 10%. We’re not going to say we won’t take the power play anymore. I think as long as we keep getting shots, we got 15 tonight on the goalie and we had a lot more blocked. We had plenty of possession and plenty of puck movement, so we’ll get some power play goals sooner or later. We’re doing pretty well with a 10% power play. I can’t wait until we get it going and see what our club looks like once we get it going.
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