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UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN HOCKEY MEDIA CONFERENCE

February 22, 2016

Mark Johnson

Madison, Wisconsin

THE MODERATOR: After finishing the regular season 30-3-1, the third ranked women's hockey team opens the postseason with a best of three WCHA playoff series against Minnesota State this weekend at LaBahn Arena. Friday's game is 7:00 p.m. Saturday's contest is 4:00 p.m. If necessary, Sunday's game will be at 2:00 p.m. All three games will stream live on BTN Plus.

Head Coach Mark Johnson is here.

COACH JOHNSON: I think as a coach, as a player, collectively as a team, it's an exciting time of year. You finished the long grind of the regular season. It certainly was a successful season. And now the opportunity to play in our playoffs. If you can win four games, you can win another championship. That's how we'll approach it as we prepare for Minnesota State, Mankato this weekend.

Again, it's an opportunity. Instead of being a 34-game schedule, it comes down to two weekends, and really the only thing you're guaranteed is this weekend. So your mindset has to shift a little bit, and you really have to come out and try to establish something, especially early in the series.

It's a fun time of year. As I said, as a coach, it's exciting, and certainly the players are going to be excited about the opportunity they have this weekend.

Q. Can there be positives in defeat considering you went 32 games and only tasted it once prior to this past weekend?
COACH JOHNSON: Well, there's a learning opportunity, as most of our games are. Whether you win or lose, you try to learn from it, come back today and try to make some strides and make some improvements. The team was very successful over the course of the winter in doing that.

This past weekend, we did end up losing some games, but I was very impressed with the way we rebounded and came back Saturday, especially the second half of that game. Had an opportunity on a couple of occasions to take the lead, and they met the challenge, and they found a way at the end to beat us.

At the end of the day, you never like to lose, but if you can learn from your experiences and become better because of it, I think it's an opportunity to do that. So you get on the bus Saturday disappointed in defeat, but if you look at the entire body of work and us winning the WCHA Championship, I think our players have a lot to be proud of.

Now you just switch gears. You get a two-week season, guaranteed one weekend, and you give yourself an opportunity, again, to maybe in two weeks go up there and play again for a championship.

Q. Coach, you always talk about the importance of getting through the first eight to ten minutes, especially on the road like that in that environment. Both games, tough starts. Power-play goal given up. Is there anything you saw that would point to why the slow start?
COACH JOHNSON: I don't think we did a very good job either night in that category. We were down two goals, I think Friday after six minutes, and then Saturday, my point prior to the game was the emphasis on that start, didn't do a very good job. They scored a nice power-play goal, and we had a breakdown, and they scored off a rebound, and we're down 2-0.

What I did like about it is we had adversity Saturday again, similar to what we did Friday, and I thought we responded very well, talked about getting it to 2-1 at the end of the period. Then there was sort of a disputed goal to make it 3-1 again. We could have folded up. There's the biggest crowd they've ever had at Ritter. There were a lot of things against us, but we rolled our sleeves up. We continued to work and got it to 3-2. Annie ties it 3-3, and the rest of the way we played well.

We had a lot of opportunities, a lot of puck possession, a lot of offensive zone time, just didn't find a way to get that lead goal. Even in the early part of the overtime, we played well. So it was good.

We made some mistakes. They capitalized on them. As we move forward to this weekend, you want to minimize those mistakes because if you end up losing games now, it's very, very costly.

Q. Mark, when John Harrington comes here this weekend, he can look at his team and honestly say, we have nothing to lose. Play free, play easy, that's a reality. Have you ever had that as a coach? Have you ever had that opportunity to tell your players, we've got nothing to lose?
COACH JOHNSON: Oh, boy. No, we start on the other end all the time. We've got a bullet on our chest, and people are trying to hit it. Again, it's your body of work.

Playing them two weekends ago, I'm sure they'll make some adjustments. They'll look at some film and try to do some things over the course of Friday's game to offset some of our strength. It's a game of chess. Our job is to play the way we're capable of playing, play at a speed we're capable of playing at, and try to create some offensive opportunities. That will the things we focus on this week in practice.

Q. Is Ann-Renee the type of player that's going to come out and play angry this next year because of how she played against Minnesota?
COACH JOHNSON: Actually, after the two goals on Friday, I thought she played pretty well. It was sort of like a pond hockey game. Both teams were in the middle 30s with shots. That's sort of uncharacteristic when we do play Minnesota, similar to like some of the other games we've played.

Again, as a competitor, if things don't go particularly well in a certain game or a certain weekend, you come back and hone in on practice, start doing some things within practice to get yourself ready, and I'm sure Ann-Renee is going to have that mindset as she gets herself organized and we get ready for practice this afternoon, throughout the week, and get ourselves ready to play Friday night.

Q. Mark, you made a change a couple of weeks ago to your top line, took Baylee off, put Sam up there. It would appear that Baylee responded pretty well to that under the circumstances. A lot of people might have moped, their game might have regressed, but it seems her game picked up. Is that your observation?
COACH JOHNSON: Very much so. Actually, that line played extremely well Friday night in their game. They created some scoring opportunities. Saturday's game, Erika Sowchuk scored our first goal. That line is playing well.

I think what's helped Baylee is she relaxed a little bit and maybe went out and played more freely. Along with Sophia, who's very fast and aggressive on the puck, Baylee doesn't always have to be that first player in on the fore-check and try to create some turnovers whereas Sophia can do that. So the combination of the two of them, they seem to be -- you know, that chemistry part we look for, it's been there.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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