And in reality, [the players] know it's instant gratification. Somebody's going to truck the trophy around and the other one's going to go home. |
As of yesterday, I was sure he wasn't gonna play. |
BC is the favorite, ... They're the only one that has a winning record against everybody else ... I do believe they're the best team in the nation, not just the best team in the league. |
BC jumped their game up a notch or two. In every other game we played them, I believe we controlled a lot of the game. We didn't control any of this game. We were a step behind. |
Being raised in the city, you're able to spot people who are part of your area. |
Boom. We fell flat on our face. |
Both games are huge for us. We've kind of climbed out of the back seat and into the driver's seat a little bit as far as home-ice advantage is concerned in our league, and a chance to make the national tournament on our own merits. This will make a big statement for us. |
But these guys ... they were fine. They didn't play like they had butterflies. They may have had them, but it didn't show. |
Fields had some great stretches where he was invincible for us in big games ... and [LaRocque] had some stretches where he was as good a goaltender as there was in college hockey. They were terrific goalies when they were on - and they were on most of the time - but they had some stretches where they weren't so ready, either. |
Give John Curry a lot of credit for being what we expect him to be. A guy who can win a game for us when we're not playing at the top of our game. |
He couldn't make a pass or shoot a puck. If this wasn't his senior year, if he was a junior, we probably wouldn't have played him this weekend. I didn't want to miss what could have been, at any moment, his last game. |
He earned some time tonight, that's for sure. He's obviously back in the mix. |
He gets banged up otherwise, too - he plays so hard. So he missed one practice because his ankle was bothering him, not so much his side was killing him. In general, I think he's as close to 100 percent as he's gonna be until he has his operation, and I think that's plenty good enough. He's playing very, very well. |
He played ... well, he didn't have to play a great game tonight. We really didn't test him. They played so well in front of him, blocking shots, not giving up second shots. But he was still good. |
He was a little taken aback a little bit at the beginning of the year confidence-wise and playing people in the corners and controlling people the way he can now. But he gave us a good freshman year. It wasn't like he wasn't ready to play. And he's gotten better and better as it's gone along. |