Transcript from Mike Eaves' press conference
November 23, 2010 | Men's Hockey
Nov. 23, 2010
Madison, Wis. -- Wisconsin men's hockey coach Mike Eaves appeared at UW's weekly Monday news conference in anticipation of this weekend's College Hockey Showcase, pitting the team against Michigan and Michigan State.
Eaves spoke about moving on from a frustrating weekend, the coaching approach with the freshmen, and the excitement brought on by the College Hockey Showcase.
A complete transcript is below.
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QUESTION #1: Mike, what does your goaltending depth chart look like right now? Has the pecking order changed? Scott started every weekend up to this point, the Friday night game. Is that situation in flux?
EAVES: I haven’t talked about it at all with the coaching staff yet, so we’ll determine that as the week goes on, I guess.
QUESTION #2: Mike, where do you see the rivalry with Michigan/Michigan State evolving in the next couple years? Now with Penn State coming in, one would think there’s going to be a Big Ten hockey conference maybe on the horizon. How do you see this rivalry maybe evolving to where you play more than just once a year?
EAVES: Well, having the showcases always kept it alive, that rivalry, and I know people look forward to us playing Michigan/Michigan State when we have these weekends. I know our kids look forward to going there because there’s such long history with the schools, back to a time when I played and before. So the kids look forward to it, there’s a lot of notoriety because of the football/basketball rivalries, the Big Ten connection, and the fact that it’s going to continue to grow, it looks like it’s going to grow into that again, and this is just an extension. This weekend will be an extension for the future.
QUESTION #3: Some coaches or players have said that they’d rather get blown out than lose a close game because it’s easier to bounce back from such a thing. Is that your experience, and what do you expect seeing these guys because they’ve lost a number of close games now, tough ones, over the last two weekends, what their recovery is going to be like this week?
EAVES: Well, taking a look at our schedule, I mean, we’ve played some really high ranked teams. As frustrating as it was, you know, not getting the call on Friday night, and then the winning goal Saturday, it was a very fortuitous bounce. I mean, we actually blocked a shot, and it went right under that guy’s stick and he shot it, made a perfect shot. We played pretty good hockey this weekend, and as disappointing as it is, this is life. And as we said to the kids after the game, what are we going to do about it?
You know, Bo was up here talking about he knows how he’s going to go to practice. I think the coaching staff knows how they feel. I want to meet here with the captains before practice today and kind of get a feel and make sure that, you know, we did a lot of really good things, and I can make a, I’ve got a list of things that I’m going to talk about with the team that we did well, and we have to just continue to keep our eye on the prize and continue to improve. Sometimes life isn’t fair, you know, we all know that, and but we have to continue to move on, and our attitude, this is an opportunity for our kids to learn about life.
We have a saying in our locker room, from tough times comes character. This is a time for us to grow in that area, and that’s going to be our attitude as coaches, and I think our leadership will be on the same page.
QUESTION #4: Mike, with all your freshmen, are you still learning who responds to what in terms of some guys need tough love, some guys need more pats on the back more than anything, are you still learning that with your guys or do you have a pretty good handle on that?
EAVES: No, without question, especially with the freshmen. The ink is still pretty fresh on the pages when we’re writing about these young men, but we saw, I thought our freshman line of Dahl and Clark and Sean Little, that was as good as I’ve seen Mr. Dahl and Mr. Clark play, and then Sean did some really nice things. They played with great energy. They made some deposits of trust with the coaching staff because of the way they played.
I saw Derek Lee do some stuff that we’ve been working on in practice that make him more effective. So again, I think we tend to forget how young we are because the bottom line is you want to win. And you know, the team that we had last year, that was a progression over two or three years to get to that point, and this young group is growing, and we like a lot of things that we’re seeing and we’re moving forward, and we’re still learning about what buttons to push with these young men to try to get them to play as effective as they can.
QUESTION #5: Your players and you, as a coach obviously, understand the process throughout the entire season of what that prize is at the end of year, and knowing that, you know, a stumble here or there, even in October or November could cost you in the end. How do you try to avoid putting additional pressure on these young men to just concentrate on the process before they can look ahead too far?
EAVES: Well, we don’t talk about just what you said. I mean, I don’t know if they’re cognizant of the fact that, you know, the losses now are going to affect us at the end. That’s something we can’t control. What we can control, and we’ve said this since day one here, we want to be playing our best hockey at the end of the season. And in the process, we’ve got to find a way to answer riddles as we go through the season, but those are things that we can handle ourselves and control ourselves on a day-to-day basis. They hear that message, I mean, you guys have heard that message from us since our first week here, and it gets old, but it’s just the fundamental truth.
QUESTION #6: Not to belabor the point about your freshmen, but do you, IT would seem, common sense would say that their confidence is probably a little wobbly right now given what you’ve gone through. Do you have to kind of take them down a different path than perhaps your veterans to make them understand that, you know, it’s still early in the season, there’s still a long way to go, who you’ve played, those types of things?
EAVES: For example, that line that we just mentioned, the Dahl line, heck, if I’m coming to practice today, I just know that I played my best hockey, so I’m looking forward to practice. I think that the overall feeling, the fact that we haven’t won in four, I mean, that gorilla in the corner is there, it exists. And the only way that is going to change is by going out and winning. We recognize that as coaches. And again, that’s the end product we’re working towards, so what we control is going back to the process.
