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UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN HOCKEY MEDIA CONFERENCE

January 18, 2016

Mike Eaves

Madison, Wisconsin

THE MODERATOR: Men's Hockey Head Coach Mike Eaves is here and will take questions.

Q. With the Big Ten you have a lot of revolving rivalries, Minnesota is a hold-over rivalry in your conference. Does that carry any extra juice with your guys?
COACH EAVES: I think having a handful of guys from that state and the history, this weekend is always a little bit more fun.

I think that no matter what the records are, that everybody gets a little excited about this weekend, and it always produces some really fun hockey.

Q. I know you're concentrating on your team but how would you describe Big Ten hockey this season, as you kinda look over the six teams and some of the results that have been coming forth?
COACH EAVES: I think we have talked about this a little bit, Brian, the fact that game-to-game, night-to-night, I think what makes it very interesting is teams feel they can win the game that they're currently looking at, that every team has the ability to do that. We certainly feel that; I think other teams feel that.

You look at the record, and we haven't been -- we have not been on the "W" side as much as we would have liked, but we have been there knocking and certainly have been doing good things and moving forward, and I still think that we feel that way, that we can go into any game with what we're doing and how we're playing, and if we can get that again, we have a chance to win some of these games.

Q. Mike, what makes for a good rivalry? I would think there has got to be a little bit of pain, there has probably got to be a little bit of respect, there's got to be some dislike. What in your mind constitutes a good rivalry?
COACH EAVES: I think all of those things you mentioned, for sure, and I think history is a part of that. I think the rivalry thing has been -- I don't want to say "watered down" but some form of that verbiage in that these kids know each other so much better than they used to.

They play all summer and they discover, he's not a bad guy, and before when you didn't play against each other in the summertime, he was an unknown factor, and the things you heard you kinda got a distaste for them.

It's not at the level that it once was, but it's still Minnesota and the history there still dictates that rivalry to a degree.

Q. My previous question, I guess what I was wondering, the scores that we've seen in Big Ten hockey. It seems like we have seen some fire wagon hockey in this league this year; would you agree with that?
COACH EAVES: More so than other years, for sure. You don't know if that's a reflection on goaltending, play away from the puck, offensive people that we have in the league now, I don't know what the current reason is for that but your observation is right, there has been a lot of high scores.

Q. What do you think of the play of Matt Jurusik this past weekend?
COACH EAVES: Well, having chatted with him after the game, there was parts of this weekend he was brilliant and there was parts of this weekend that he would like to have back. I think if you talk to him in a one-on-one situation, though, especially on Friday night, those goals that were in were direct shots, and in talking with him he said "I should have had some of those."

And he looked at them on Saturday, which is very unusual for a goalie, because you usually don't want to talk about those type of things; you don't want to get inside his head, because it's such a unique position.

But he's of the mind-set, I want to know, I want to learn and get better, so he looked at them, and actually in comparing it to some of his saves on Saturday, he did improve on his technique in those very same situations. So to answer your question concisely, he was brilliant at times, and there were other ones that he would like to have back.

Q. Eddie Wittchow had a couple of points this weekend; it's been a while for him. Are you going to allow him to join the rush a little bit more and try to create offensively, Mike?
COACH EAVES: He got two points, he got back-to-back points in a game which has probably never happened in his career, but we joked about it as a staff, he actually leads our team with scoring chances shorthanded. He just seems to find himself in a position where he's got the puck and going up ice with it, but very unusually for Eddie to be leading our team in short-handed chances.

THE MODERATOR: Anything else for Coach? Thanks, Mike.

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