Eaves Addresses the Media
December 03, 2007 | Men's Hockey
Head men's hockey head coach Mike Eaves addressed the media at Wisconsin's weekly Monday news conference. Eaves answered questions on the WCHA standings, the lessons learned with a difficult schedule and the team's ability to come back from deficits, among other topics. A full transcript follows.
To view the archived video of the news conference, click on the Audio/Video link on the left.
QUESTION #1: Mike, when you take a look at the League standings, it's a couple teams have separated themselves a little bit, but there's a pretty tight pack right in the middle, and you're in that. Is that something that you enjoy seeing that your team is hopefully not going to be playing from behind in the second half. If you can get a couple points this weekend, you're right in the thick of things as you 're going to go forward'
MIKE EAVES: That's where we want to be before Christmas-time is right in the thick of things with being so young. That would be a good place for us to be because we would expect that the second half, based on our experiences, that we would be better able to find that consistency level.
QUESTION #2: What does a win sweep this past weekend do for the next two coming games with Minnesota State'
EAVES: Well, hopefully, it gives us some good momentum going in on the road. Mankato is a tough place to play. It has been for us. So if we have some momentum, and we believe in what the things that we've been trying to do, and we're there a little bit more grounded in cement, our roots are deeper in the way we want to, then that will give us a better opportunity to be successful on the road.
QUESTION #3: Mike the last 10 games have all been against ranked teams. And I don 't know if you would say that this is easier of all a sudden not playing against a ranked team, but what were some of the more prominent lessons you think your team got out of this recent stretch'
EAVES: Probably seeing firsthand the level of play that you have to compete against at the top level in that the pace, the strength, the skill, the way the teams played tenaciously and played together, those are things that you can talk about in practice, and you can try to simulate, but actually go and walk through the fire, you're going to afford yourself to be a better team based on those things. So hopefully, that has happened for us.
QUESTION #4: On Saturday, you kind of gave Kyle some extra ice time . . . way of playing out of the slump. He responded. His teammates seemed to be giving approval for that as well. Is that something that you can continue to do with Kyle, or is it kind of a one-time thing in a game situation like that'
EAVES: No. You know, it was a good sign that he scored, and, you know, if you watch other teams, you will see that they will do this for their high-end players in terms of their skilled players trying to get them on the ice as much as possible just to get them going. When you have a game that is filled with Power Play and penalty killing, you need to involve them because they're going to get cold on the bench.
And when a young man is going through a little bit of a slump, you want to try to give him opportunities to get out of that slump more than just a normal shift. So by doing what we did this past weekend, and him scoring is a good sign, and hopefully, that will continue to go. And if we need to find more ice time, I think it would behoove us to do so.
QUESTION #5: Mike, Blake is having a productive start to his sophomore season. Do you just see the confidence growing within him'
EAVES: Well, without question, and I think it's interesting that now he 's being productive on an offensive scale when really he's been asked to play against the other team's best line and shut them down. And he's looking forward to that challenge, and so he's not worried about getting points, and yet they're coming, which I think is a lesson for him.
Last year when all he thought about was goals, and assists, and how pretty can I make my goals look, and now he's not worried about that. He's settled into the type of player that he's probably going to have to become in order to move on in this game. And look what's happening. He's being successful in terms of offense. So for him, good defense leads the offense, but you can see the confidence growing in him, especially, you know, holding on to the puck, making good decisions, and taking what's given when it's there.
QUESTION #6: Coach, you'd think maybe with a young team that falling behind early would be a big problem, but this team has seemed to be able to come back in the third period. What does that say about this team'
EAVES: They're too resilient or too young to know any better. And it's like when you have your own children, and they fall down, and they skin their knee, and they're looking to you to see how you're going to react. And if you are standing there with a smile on your face, oh, my goodness, you fell down, look at that. Come on, pick yourself off, rub it off, and let's go. And, you know, that 's youth.
And with this group, it seems to be the same thing. If we're not panicking behind the bench, and we're talking about, hey, let's have our next best shift, okay, let's go have our next best shift. That's the youth that's in them. And they've been a resilient group up to this time. And Coach Oz has done a nice job. He's got three freshmen defensemen back there that have, you know, tripped and fell in the mud, but they come back the next best shift, learning to move on.
QUESTION #7: Mike, I think if there's a stat that probably doesn't seem right about this team, it's the fact that you're last in the League in goals against, and given what you've done in recent years that that kind of jumps out at you. What's the piece that might dictate that more than anything ' You've got three freshmen defensemen. You've got a lot of young forwards. You've got a first-time goaltender who's running the show. Is there one thing that can be traced to that number'
EAVES: It's all of those things, depending on the game. I mean, you could look at moments in the game when it's the defense tripping in the mud, or the forwards are not doing their job, or Shane wanted to have a shot back. I mean, it goes from one to the other. So it's interesting watching video. Boy, we do some really good things. And then the next period, you say, oh, my goodness, where did that come from' I thought we got rid of that. And it's just, it's part and partial working with young people.
The first goal the other night there, Shane gets out, he double clutches with the puck, gets in the way, can't get back to the net, the thing's in the net. And yet he does that five or six times after that perfectly. You know, it's trying to get rid of those ones that end up biting you in the fanny, and then that's just part and partial with working young people.
QUESTION #8: I don't know if you've looked at this in looking back on the weekend, but it seemed like Ryan McDonagh had a pretty solid weekend. He was plus two both nights. He made a couple of nice one-on-one plays. Is it a coincidence that, you know, he's maybe trying to play for a spot on that junior team, and this is the last weekend before that comes out, or is that something maybe that that's . . .
EAVES: I don't know. I know that they were watching him in Colorado College. They were in Michigan. They were here this weekend. I mean, he's right on the bubble, but I can't tell you why. Ryan and I didn't have that talk. I think, it doesn't matter, Ryan's a pretty focused young man.
He's one of those guys, I think, that does a pretty good job of staying in the moment, and he was just trying to play well to help his team win. And by doing that, if by chance he happens to get selected, then that's a bonus, but he's a pretty grounded young man.
QUESTION #9: Early in the season, the defensemen in the scoring department were kind of a breakneck pace in the number of goals and their production offensively. Maybe it 's come back just a bit from what it was earlier. But you talked at the beginning about them needing to make that adjustment and playing at the defensive end as well and not getting caught up. Have they made that adjustment' How has that gone for them over the past few weeks'
EAVES: We're getting better at it. We look at it, we use the term we want to get balance in our attack. And by having our defensemen up there along with three forwards below the tops and circle does not present a lot of balance. We want our defensemen to be up on the play, and if they are, then we need a forward to give that attack balance by staying back a little bit.
So we're doing it more consistently. Now there's still moments where you see we're giving up three on ones and such, but, no, that's part and partial to the identity that this team needs to have. We can get up and down the ice, and the guys want to play that, it's finding that balance so you can do both.
QUESTION #10: Mike, you've been pretty patient with your power play for a stretch here, the personnel, what you're trying to do. Is there, at what point do you look at the numbers and say maybe we need to do something else. Maybe we need to do, have different people on there, or do you just tie it to the competition that you 've had here more, you know . . .
EAVES: Oh, there's several things. There's competition. This past weekend, yeah, we only get four power plays. And it's not like you listen to football commentators talk about football. They talk about the offense getting in on a rhythm when they're on the field. And we never got any rhythm at all on our power play this weekend. And when we did get out there, it looked like we had worked on it, and we know very well that we had.
So there's a little bit of rhythm that goes there with the offense and the flow and the ebb, and it'll come. I mean, we're going to continue to work on it. We have switched personnel in the last two weekends, and we will continue to do what we do based on our opposition, but it'll come around. I have no doubt about that.
QUESTION #11: Brendan Smith had his struggles Friday night. On Saturday, did you see him grow out of it a little bit before he got dinged up a little later in the game . . .
EAVES: Yeah, he struggled Friday. Saturday early, he struggled again. And, but after that first couple shifts, he started to compete and look like the old Brendan Smith of old. It's interesting how you learn about your young people. And maybe for the first time in Brendan's life, he's not being as successful as he had been accustomed to, and he doesn't know how to handle it. And so part of his growth and our job as coaches is to help him figure that out a little bit and grow through that. Because as we all know, it won't be the last time it happens. And as he becomes better at that, he'll be a more consistent player.
