Opening statements
“Well, I’m running out of things to say. I can’t tell you how proud and happy I am for every guy on our team. It’s just been an incredible season so far. We know that there’s still a big challenge ahead of us. But we’re certainly going to enjoy this over the next few days. I don’t know if I’ve ever been around a bunch of guys that work as well together as our guys do, that care about each other as much as our guys do. The work ethic is second to none. The commitment to each other is unmatched. It’s just been an incredible six, seven months. We certainly understand that our work isn’t done yet, but we’ll think about that after these next few days because these guys deserve to enjoy what they’ve just experience. Especially the guys who return from last year after what we went through.”
A huge reason is the two guys to my right (Matt Grzelcyk and Evan Rodriques). Not only are they star plays, they’re star people. Our room is littered with star people and it’s really been a special, special group.
I wasn’t surprised how that game unfolded. It was kind of like a heavyweight fight. We controlled the first few rounds. Almost had a couple of opportunities to deliver a knockout punch. Then they’d come back and dominate for about 10 or 12 minutes. Then we’d come back and dominate for about 10 or 12 minutes.
After two periods you’ve got a 2-2 tie and then I thought that we did what we do best. I thought we played a great third period. We were relentless. We were smart. And we just did the things we needed to do to win an incredibly important hockey game and extend our season”
On the thin margin between winning and losing
“At this time of the season, every opponent is going to give you a lot of difficulty. They wouldn’t be playing if they weren’t. In the all-important third period I thought we took control of the game. Whoever we play a week from Thursday, they’re going to pose a problem for us or they wouldn’t be in the Frozen Four. There’s a lot of good hockey teams out there. There’s a small margin of error in every college hockey game and that margin gets smaller and smaller the later you player.”
On winning 39 of 61 faceoffs
“If you look back, we have actually come a long way on faceoffs because the first few months we were so horrific. . . . We’ve been a much better faceoff team. It’s tough to shake a reputation because we were a bad faceoff team early and people just keep saying that. I guess I’m surprised at how well we did tonight, but it’s been a much better part of our game over the last two or three months.”
On defenseman Doyle Somerby
“He was immense. He had a great first half. Thought he was kind of OK for a period of time and he’s really elevated his game. He’s been a lot more decisive. He’s making good decisions. Very active on the forecheck. Did a great job the last 20 seconds with the goalie pulled. You have a tendency when the other team has six and you have five to kind of sit back and watch. We did that when they almost scored. I thought after that, OK, the guy’s got the puck let’s go defend him. Everybody else has to protect, but don’t give him time. He did a great job jumping. The guy had the puck down by the left of our goalie with about eight or nine seconds to go and people were indecisive and Doyle took charge.”
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