The level of hockey that is going to be played this weekend will be tremendous. It's a great regional hockey tournament for college hockey fans. |
The No. 1 thing it says is that what our team is doing offensively maybe gets more of the headlines. But if you take a close look at this team, they're a group of guys who take a lot of pride in good team defense. |
The plain fact is that some guys really have to look deep within themselves and figure out how badly they want to play. You can't come out and play rope-a-dope for two periods. On our home ice, you don't want to leave a game to a bounce of the puck in the last 20 minutes and we did. And this is what you get, a 1-0 loss. |
The second half of their season, they've been as good as anybody. We fought hard to get home-ice advantage. Now we have to take advantage of it. |
There's been no change in philosophy as far as the way we approach the game or as far as what we're trying to teach or the attitude that our team is going to try to play with. |
There's no halfway at this time of year. We've been pretty cautious over the past week. Drew has been skating for over a week now. With a situation like that, we're not going to rush anybody back. Certainly, that was the case with Drew. |
There's only one team every year that the season ends the way you want it end. Certainly when your season does come to an end, whether its earlier on in the season, earlier on in the tournament or a night like tonight, it's tough. |
They should be offensive leaders for us and throughout the country. |
Things change an awful lot. From Friday morning to Sunday morning, those standings can take on a whole different look. There's nothing expected or guaranteed. You have to go out and work for what you get. |
This is tough. No use looking at the standings on Friday, because through a weekend, depending on your performance and job you get done, things change pretty drastically. |
Those are things we'll turn to next week. We've got an awful lot of ability, an awful lot of character in our locker room that will be returning. And the one thing that sticks out in my mind is we have some unfinished business. |
Those two guys we have in back will have a lot of stability for us. They can give a lot of confidence to the guys playing in front of them. |
We fought real hard to get this opportunity, but we're certainly not happy just getting there. |
We got off to the start we wanted. We established our game and played physically. |
We open up with Manitoba and then do not ease into our schedule. |