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UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN HOCKEY MEDIA CONFERENCEDecember 2, 2013Mark JohnsonTHE MODERATOR: Riding a 12‑game unbeaten streak, the women's hockey team concludes the first half of the season this weekend at home against Bemidji State. They play on Friday and Sunday afternoons. Both games will start at 2:00 p.m. Head coach Mark Johnson is here. We'll have opening comments and takes questions. COACH JOHNSON: Thanks, Brian. I guess it's certainly nice to get an opportunity to play at home again. It's been a demanding and very satisfying six games on the road against great competition. I thought our game Saturday night was similar to our first game up in Minneapolis when we played Minnesota earlier in the season. Very fast paced. Two very competitive teams really going at it. Both goaltenders playing well, and found a way to win the hockey game in the third period and certainly finish the six‑game road trip on a high, and now an opportunity to, as Brian mentioned, finish the first half of the season at home, playing a couple of home games Friday afternoon and Sunday afternoon. Good week of practice and get ourselves prepared for our first game against Bemidji at 2:00 on Friday. Q. Mark, I'm sure you're expecting this question, but how is Alex Rigsby? Any word on her? COACH JOHNSON: No updates right now. I'll get some more information as she gets evaluated again here shortly. But a situation where the unexpected, in our business, happens. We can't control injuries. As I mentioned, Saturday's game was a very exciting game, and all of a sudden, Alex goes down and comes hobbling off. Call a time‑out, put Ann in there, give her a few shots to warm up, and finished off very strong with her performance. Hopefully it's nothing serious and she'll be back quickly, but right now I don't have an update. Q. For Ann to play the way she did, I mean, Duluth's not an easy place to play, and it's not easy to come in and replace the all‑time winningest goalie in school history either. She did pretty well? COACH JOHNSON: She did very well. You get the choice of just putting her in and dropping the puck and playing her, or you can utilize your time‑out and give her a few moments and a few shots to get herself mentally ready. That's the path we chose to go. It didn't take long for them to get a golden opportunity. Can you imagine if you're the other team and all of a sudden the other goaltender comes in, you get a little bit more excited, a little bit more jump in your step wanting to get that chance, knowing that she's probably a little bit cold. They pulled their goalie with just over a minute to go in the game, and they had six players on the ice, and they attacked the net very strongly. She withstood it and had a great big smile on her face at the end of the game. I think her teammates were equally as excited for her as she was for herself. She played very well and gave us an opportunity to come away with a 1‑0 victory. Q. I know the answer to this probably depends a lot on Alex's health, but how good is this team right now? COACH JOHNSON: How good is our team? Q. Yeah. COACH JOHNSON: What I like about the team is two things. One, I really enjoy the chemistry. It's been that way since day one. The players get along. They enjoy being around themselves. Part of it when you go on the road is if you have good chemistry, you can have success. Certainly, our success the last three weekends was part of our chemistry. The second part is I like the way we responded the last three Saturday nights, you know, having won a tight game against Northeastern out in Vail, coming back against BU, who's been in the Frozen Four the last couple of years, has a very strong team. We played very competitive, played hard, won a big hockey game. After tying in North Dakota Friday night, again, a team that's ranked fourth in the country, we came back Saturday night with another very strong performance. Played a consistent 60‑minute game, and we're able to come away in their barn with a victory. Very similar to Saturday night. After tying Friday night in a very even game, coming back and finding a way to win. Very competitive, very entertaining game. The ice bags on the buses. You know, we're there just because of the commitment that the players made Saturday night. It's a big victory. How good we are? Some nights we can be pretty good. But Brian mentioned this is the first half of the season. You want to finish it off on a positive note, let the kids take finals, get a chance to go back home, enjoy some holiday time with their families, and then come back and get ready for the second half. Depending how the weekend goes, it's been a good first half to this point. Q. Mark, any concern that your players would kind of take a breath right this minute to take it through the six‑game stretch with some really difficult teams on the road? Even though you just have one more weekend before you hit the break that maybe they're just kind of sitting here going, boy, we made it through that week; we can relax a little bit? COACH JOHNSON: That's a great question. I was talking with my staff this morning‑‑ I go back to my NHL days, and you'll hear announcers talk about NHL teams that are on extended road trips, six, seven, eight games, and they come back and play that first home game, and they usually lay an egg or it doesn't go very well. I'm certainly aware of it, and I'm going to make my players aware of it. Unfortunately, I can't go out and execute for them. We've been consistent. I don't think that will change. So last week getting ready to go up to Duluth, we had four great practices prior to our game Friday night. I anticipate having another week of strong practice and the competitiveness and the chemistry part of it, I think, will help in our preparation for Friday afternoon. The challenge becomes you're playing Friday at 2:00. You still have school going on. That's probably my biggest challenge compared to the question that you asked me. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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