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NCAA MEN'S FROZEN FOUR

April 7, 2016

Tampa Bay, Florida

Quinnipiac - 3, Boston College 2

MODERATOR: We're pleased to be joined by Quinnipiac University. We've got head Coach Rand Pecknold, Landon Smith, and Travis St. Denis. Coach, an opening statement.

COACH PECKNOLD: First off, I'd like to congratulate Boston College on a fantastic year. Thought they played great tonight. They gave us everything we could handle.

Second, I want to make sure I mentioned -- it hasn't come up this week, but we have a sports psychologist worked with us, Dr. Wayne Halliwell. He's been great, I think a big reason for our success. I want to kind of acknowledge what he's done for our team this year. Met with our team earlier in the year, gave us some really good ideas about reset button and being resilient and how to handle adversity.

Third, in term of us, I don't think it was the prettiest game on the planet, but this team is resilient. It's great character, great culture. And all year long we have found ways to win. That's what we do. We find ways to win, and we did it tonight. We're excited to move on.

Q. Could you talk about the forecheck and the ability of your forwards to get there in that first ten minutes of the game, create those turnovers and that led to goals?
LANDON SMITH: I think our forechecking is huge. I think it's a big part of the way we start the game. And if we succeed in the way we want to forecheck, it creates kind of chaos and it tips things in our direction.

TRAVIS ST. DENIS: Yeah, I think our forechecks are a key thing for our team. And especially early on in the game there against BC, we definitely took it to them the first five minutes and created some offense off there and luckily got a couple of goals in.

Q. Travis, in late September I asked Soren what the biggest goal for this team was, and he said to win a National Championship. I think he spoke for all of you guys when he said that. How do you feel knowing that that game is the next one that's coming up?
TRAVIS ST. DENIS: Yeah, it's definitely very exciting. You know, it was a tough loss our freshman year as a senior class. And now we get another kick at the can. So we're definitely very excited for Saturday.

Q. Landon, Coach mentioned you guys have always found ways to win. Is this kind of the way the game went tonight and you guys finding a way to pull it out? Is this, for somebody who is seeing it for the first time, is this pretty indicative of the way you've played all year, just finding a way to get it done tonight?
LANDON SMITH: I think so. We have a really resilient group of guys. No matter what the score or situation is in the game, nothing changes in the locker room. Everybody expects to win and everybody just goes out there and gives it their all and nothing changes. Not too high, not too low.

Q. Landon, just talk about your goal. It seemed like BC came out extremely strong there in the second and that goal kind of zapped things for them a bit.
LANDON SMITH: We had a nice faceoff and the puck went down to Tim Clifton, and he made a nice play to the net. And the puck kind of went over Demko, and I was behind him and I took a couple of swipes at it and it went in.

MODERATOR: Thank you. Questions for Coach.

Q. We've heard a lot about your power play, but tonight your penalty kill was the one that came through for you. Can you talk about how that worked or what you did to make that as well as it did or how it works, basically?
COACH PECKNOLD: It's kind of one go, we all go. Like we can't have three guys going and the fourth guy not. So I thought the rotations were good. I thought the compete was great on the P.K. tonight. The willingness to block shots. Our neutral zone was really good in kind of denying them entries.

The only issue we had was we lost more faceoffs than we normally do on the P.K. and had some failed clears where guys just got to have a little more poise. We've got to rip that puck down and kill some time off.

But, again, we found a way and I think our P.K. is better than what we showed tonight. But it was good enough.

Q. When you get a 2-0 lead, it gives you that luxury maybe to manage the game. How did you feel that your team managed that game tonight?
COACH PECKNOLD: I think in spurts we were really good. I thought we were controlling certain parts of it in the first. I thought we took a bad penalty and let them back into it. I thought we took bad penalties the whole night.

I'd say the two things we did poorly tonight were bad penalties and the failed clears. But other than that, the compete factor was outstanding. And that's one thing we talk a lot about. We don't have to be perfect if we're ultra competitive. And they can beat one guy, they can beat two. They can beat three. But we'll have a fourth and fifth guy there.

And I think you saw that tonight in waves and how we come. I got off topic and didn't answer your question. But going back to managing the game, it was choppy. And I think that's what happens with NCAA Tournament games, with these two-minute timeouts. There's four mini games every period. It was choppy. There were times BC was in control, there were times when we were in control, and we found a way to get the W.

Q. Talk about the play of your goalie especially at the end of the game where he was basically standing on his head taking the best BC could offer and 34 saves on the night. Talk about the play of the goalie.
COACH PECKNOLD: Garteig is a winner. Great battle mode. All year long he's been going up head to head with the top goalies in the country. And he finds a way to win. That's what he's done. He's done it for us for three years. He did it in junior hockey. Great competitor. Great battle mode. And really happy for him. Really happy we had him at the net tonight. He was great.

Q. I think I've seen seven of your wins this year, and after every single one you said that wasn't the prettiest one. When was the last prettiest one? And I assume you're okay with that.
COACH PECKNOLD: Good question. Sometimes that's how we play. We find ways to win. I thought Lowell was really good. That Lowell win, we were great. The Yale win, Brown. I could come up with a few if I really thought about it.

But I guess it's part of what we do. I'd like us to be a little cleaner in what we do. But, again, sometimes our compete level is so -- it's off the charts and guys just get a little frazzled a little bit.

So there's a tradeoff with that. If I want to slow them down and we're not going to compete as hard, we'll probably have more poise. But I think we're good because of that compete. We've got some kids, they're willing to do anything to win. They're selfless. Some of the shots -- like Tommy Schutt had a huge shot block at the end, no fear, he's going to drop drown and eat that puck.

That was a big part tonight. I thought our shot blocking was really good. I thought Boston College at times didn't want to shoot the puck. They were trying to shoot wide, whatever, that works once in a while, but I think we intimidated a little and they passed up good scoring chances.

Q. You were talking tonight about it not being a very pretty win, yet when you had your first opportunity and the team scored on the power play, can you talk about how maybe important that was to score in response to their goal so quickly and Landon's contribution on the power play this season?
COACH PECKNOLD: Landon's had a great year. Landon's points are probably lower than what he does for us. He scores a lot of goals for us, where he's the net front screen and doesn't get the goal or the assist, but in my mind he's the guy, the reason we scored the goal. So he does a lot of that for us. We acknowledge that as a team.

But that goal was huge. Like our power play -- we'll definitely be cute at times, make some unbelievable plays. Other times we're just like let's get it to the net. I thought that's something we had to do with Demko, an elite goaltender, one of the best in the country. We just had to keep putting pucks on net and find ways to score rebound goals. That was an ugly, greasy goal at the net front, and that's how you win hockey games.

Q. So you talked about that like ultra competitive factor, and it seemed like other than the first couple minutes of the second period your team did a good job of taking away BC's time and space in all zones of the ice. How did that contribute to the team's success today?
COACH PECKNOLD: We want to do that to anybody we play. We want to deny time and space. I think you look at the talent, the firepower BC has, they've got to be one or two in the country in terms of talent. If those kids have time, they're going to make plays. And we had to kind of get up in their face a little bit.

We kept talking about not sitting back in a prevent defense. And we did that a couple times. We want to go. We want to go and really regap and push up. And I thought we did a pretty good job for the most part on that tonight.

Q. I don't know if you have a kangaroo court, but Timmy Clifton picks up three minors. Is he getting hung by his thumbs? What's going on?
COACH PECKNOLD: We do have a kangaroo court. The players handle that. I don't handle that. I'll let them deal with that. Timmy knows he needs to be more under control. He was good tonight outside those three penalties. His compete level was fantastic. Off the charts. He's a big leader for us and a big reason why we win.

Q. It seemed like the boards were really lively. A few of the BC players talked about trying to take advantage of that. Did you note that, and did you have to adjust or do anything?
COACH PECKNOLD: Absolutely. We talked about it this morning in practice. We've had a couple of days to practice here. That puck comes off hard. I always think it's hard to kind of plan that, though, to use that to your advantage. I think it happens sometimes.

And if you're crashing the net a lot, you're going to get a break off it. But to set plays off it, you don't know where it's going to go. But no question those are some of the liveliest kick plates I've seen in a while.

Q. You were taking on a program that's in the Frozen Four all the time, yet your dominating start, which arguably won the game for you, made them look like they were the inexperienced team. Can you talk about how that happened?
COACH PECKNOLD: I can't factor in with BC, because obviously it's a great program. And Coach York is the best with his thousand-plus wins, what they've done at BC. You can't take anything away from him. He gets his teams ready to go.

I think for us, we kept focusing on this is what we're good at, this is what we do well, and that's what we're going to do on Thursday against BC. We just kept hammering it, hammering it. We didn't change anything we've done all year. The thing I've said for 42 games now is if we play to our identity, we will be rewarded. And that's what we said today, and we were.

Q. What did you learn in 2013 finishing runners-up and what did you learn that you can use in the championship game Saturday night to make your team better?
COACH PECKNOLD: I don't know if there's anything specific. I thought we played great in the 2013 Frozen Four. I thought we played against St. Cloud. Great against Yale. Just couldn't get a bounce, ran into a hot goalie.

In the end, I go back, I keep getting asked questions about that year and this year. In the end, like we have a process, we have an identity that we play to. And we're 42 games in, and it works. We don't need to change anything. We need to keep doing it, try to stay healthy for Saturday. And, again, play to our identity, and we'll get our reward.

MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach.

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