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UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN HOCKEY MEDIA CONFERENCEOctober 6, 2014Mark JohnsonCOACH JOHNSON: I think certainly everybody in our camp is looking forward to Friday night and opening up the season at home. Certainly had a successful trip down in Lindenwood, and then this past weekend up in Duluth, which is always a tough place to play. We were able to put together six good periods. As I told the team Friday prior to our game up in Duluth, the object is to try to get better than we were the previous weekend at Lindenwood. Obviously, we had some more players this past weekend than we did down in Lindenwood and certainly excited about the way we started Friday and finished Saturday night. So it's a good start. Again, I think everybody, including the players, are looking forward to Friday night and opening up the season at home. Q. Does a sweep in Duluth give you a little more juice because it hasn't happened all that often? COACH JOHNSON: Well, it certainly gives you some confidence, especially for our younger players. It's generally a pretty hostile environment going up there. History tells us a lot of our games have been tight. 25 or 28 of the games have gone into overtime in the last seven or eight years, so more so than we did the previous weekend in Lindenwood. Then we had five players in the lineup this past weekend than we did have down in Lindenwood. So I went in there open minded. I didn't know what to expect, to be honest with you. Certainly we came out strong and played well and earned a really strong victory Friday night. As a coach early in the season what are you going to get on the second night? Again, very pleased with a lot of different parts of our game. It's one of those situations where you look at what we did well this past weekend and try to build on it and try to get ourselves prepared to play well this upcoming weekend. Q. Katy Josephs and Karley Sylvester are chipping in early on here. Do you need them to either keep up this pace or continue at some sort of rate where they can help your club be successful? COACH JOHNSON: I think the deeper you can go, especially with kids scoring goals, certainly the better off you're going to be because your top players are going to have nights where things aren't going to go the way they maybe planned for them to go, certainly if you have depth in your scoring. I think with Karley, their line this past weekend, putting Emily Clark in between them, and you watch both games, they did a lot of good things. Emily adds a lot of speed to that line and certainly scored a couple big goals for us Friday to get us the victory. Having Blayre back with Britt and Josephs who played together most of last year, I think they're comfortable with each other. The thing about Katy is she's got a big‑time shot, so she needs to get herself in position, and she has. She's been able to score some goals. So I think with any player, when you get off to a good start the early part of the season, it just gives you that little bit of confidence, so the next time you go out on the ice, you're a little more comfortable. Q. The past few years your team has been steady and consistent between the pipes and defensively. Do you feel like this team has more options and more ability to score goals than in the past couple of years? How did you anticipate it coming into this year since you've only played a few games? COACH JOHNSON: I think from last year's team to this year we're probably a little deeper. So we added a couple pieces and we had quite a few bodies coming back. So the pieces we added from a scoring standpoint adds a little depth, adds a little more chemistry to some lines. It's still early, so it's a work in progress. You know what I've seen the last two weekends is very encouraging from the depth standpoint. Q. You've had some players in the past that had five gears and could get after it pretty quickly. Does Emily Clark fit in that group? If so, where? COACH JOHNSON: Well, we're two games into her career. If you would have watched both our games, especially Friday night, she scored a couple great goals. Her asset is going to be her ability to get around the ice. So if you come out Friday and watch us play, you're going to notice her just because she moves around the ice well. A lot of similarities between some of our former players that have played at a high level. She tracks the puck well, she gets on the puck well, and she's got a good stick. So you put those things together, and then having played alongside Karley who gives you a hundred percent every shift, and then you put young Annie Pankowski with her, you've got the makings of a pretty good line. It's only two games, but what we saw this past weekend was something we can certainly build on. Q. On the subject of former players who are able to put the puck in the net. Hilary Knight one of your former players recently skated practice with the Anaheim Ducks. Were you surprised by that at all? What was your reaction to it? COACH JOHNSON: No, I think that's been on her bucket list, trying to find a place on a men's team. Certainly promoting women's hockey, so to get the chance to go out there. The nice part about Anaheim is you have a few former Badgers that would have been in the locker room with Danny Heatley, so she would have had something in common with a couple of her teammates for that day. It's certainly exciting for her. It certainly helps promote women's hockey, and I'm sure it won't be the last time we see her on the ice for the men's team. Q. Is there one thing when you bring freshmen in here that is part of your culture that probably takes the longest for them to grasp? Is it the work ethic? Is it getting around school? Is there one thing that rings true with every one of your freshmen that takes them a while to figure it out? COACH JOHNSON: I think probably each one might be different from the standpoint that if they have aspirations of playing at that next level, whether it's with the Canadian National Team or the U.S. National Team, what that takes. It doesn't happen overnight. It's a process, and are you willing to adhere to the process to make those improvements? So I look at Karley Sylvester who came in four years ago, looked at that process, and she's done it for four years. Her first year she had a decent year, but look what she's done the last three years. It's all because she's created these habits over a period of time, and she's done it religiously over her career, and now she's become a really good college hockey player. And I think probably for the program, they might have in their minds that, yeah, I know I have to work hard. But when they actually see it, especially a young freshmen they work out with Karley or Blayre or in year's past they worked with Decker or Knight or Duggan, you see front row what it takes to become a better player. Obviously, the school part of it, roommates, that's all part of the process. But usually they get comfortable with that in a two or three‑week period of time with their surroundings, but I think the process of what that takes (Indiscernible). Q. We look at the schedule and see Minnesota. Do you try not to look at that? COACH JOHNSON: I see we play Ohio State next. No, I mean, I'm sure. They're kids. They look at the schedule. Our biggest thing as coaches now, last week was our fifth week of school. This is our sixth week, so that means our exams started last week and they'll continue into this week. So the big thing with a season of our length is to try to stay focused on what's next. So the coaching staff as we present what we need to do to prepare ourselves, that's all we're going to be talking about. I'm sure they'll be looking at it, and parents will be coming in and getting ahead of themselves. But as a staff and preparation, it's like Friday night and then figure out what we need to do Saturday to get ready for Sunday. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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