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NCAA MEN'S FROZEN FOUR

April 8, 2016

Tampa Bay, Florida

MODERATOR: We're joined by Quinnipiac University. We welcome them back to the podium. We're joined by Coach Rand Pecknold, student-athletes Devon Toews and Soren Jonzzon.

Coach, an opening comment.

COACH PECKNOLD: Exciting win for us last night. Obviously Boston College is a perennial power, storied program. Jerry York with over a thousand wins. That's a big win for our university. I thought BC was really good last night and gave us everything we could handle. And we're excited to survive that game and move on. And, again, a big win for our university, and we're looking forward to tomorrow night.

For me personally it was just an awesome experience in general. It was nice to have my wife Nicki there and the kids. I got to see them afterwards, and really an enjoyable moment for me with my family. Again, we're excited for tomorrow night. Proud of how we competed. Now we need to reload and get ready for another perennial power in North Dakota.

MODERATOR: Questions for the student-athletes.

Q. Devon and Soren, this might sound kind of simple, but you sit here one win away from a National Championship. What are your emotions and feelings at this time as you prepare for this?
DEVON TOEWS: I think we're approaching it the same way we always do. It's just another game to us, prepare the same way, do our scouting just like we do for any other team.

And obviously it's an exciting time for us and our university as well. So I think we're just trying to stay calm and collected and just prepare the same way we always do.

SOREN JONZZON: Just pretty much business as usual. I mean, we've got to focus on the game before we can focus on the endpoint. If we focus on the endpoint, probably the game won't go the way we want it to.

Q. Soren, last year you guys lost to North Dakota in the first round of the tournament. So was there any revenge factor going into this game?
SOREN JONZZON: Yeah, anytime a team ends your season, it's always great to have the opportunity to do the same for them. We're definitely hoping for a different outcome. We thought we played well against them last time. We made some mistakes that really hurt us. And got to give them credit. They played well too. And their goalie was fantastic, and we're excited to have the chance hopefully to take it to them this time.

Q. North Dakota's fan base was really loud last night. They travel well to these events, how do you hope to block out the noise from their fans tomorrow night?
DEVON TOEWS: If you watched our game, I think our fans are pretty loud, too. So I think they're going to have fun going at each other and cheering loud. So it will be fun to see who is louder.

SOREN JONZZON: I agree, our fans were great last night. I think the best thing we can do is hopefully get a couple of quick ones and kind of silence their end of the rink pretty quickly.

Q. As leaders on this team, can you talk a little bit about unhung heroes like Tom Hilbrich not seeing the ice time but doing pretty much everything the team has asked, continues to be a leader on this team?
SOREN JONZZON: Yeah, the leadership on this team is unbelievable, whether guys have letters or not. The secondary leadership is out of this world. They make my job very easy. I think for the most part they make the coaching staff's job very easy. A guy like Tom Hilbrich, he's just a leader on this team. There's not doubt, when he says things, guys listen.

And he has everyone's respect. And I think that you go top to bottom, even some of the younger guys now as the season progresses really stepped up and take leadership roles and they know to say the right things at the right times and everyone feeds off each other.

Q. Talk about the guy to your left, putting this program together for 22 years and you're on the verge of winning it all for the first time?
SOREN JONZZON: Yeah, Coach has done an unbelievable job for this program. Obviously it came from literally nothing pretty much, the program, late night practices, not the salary that Coach hoped to start. But he's really transformed this program, and he's a key figure, if not the most key figure at the progress of this program.

Going to the Frozen Four our freshman year was an unbelievable step. We were happy to be there. Of course at the time we were like we're here, and I think the program has gotten to the point now where we don't think, oh, we got to the Frozen Four. It's great we got here, but we're here to win the National Championship. So I think winning tomorrow would be kind of the next step in kind of the progression of the program itself.

DEVON TOEWS: I think as players what we want is to develop every year. And I think Rand gives us the best chance to do that. And coming to a winning program is something we always look at as players. Being juniors, we come to win the program. And Rand has built that here, which is awesome. That's why we're getting high-end recruits, I believe. And we love it because we have a chance to win every game, and he prepares us well for every single game, and that's all we can ask for as players.

Q. Devon, I assume as a high-end defenseman you'll be seeing their top line a whole lot tomorrow night. Just curious what your thoughts on them are, it's a line that everybody knows and what the challenges are they present to you guys?
DEVON TOEWS: I think they present challenges like Harvard's top line and Boston College's top line presents to us. They've got speed, size, skill. We've got to play our game and get in their face, take away their time and space, and we'll be fine.

Q. Yesterday your coach was talking about the commitment to the plan, to the game plan. And you play the same way every time. What is it about the system that makes it easy for you guys to buy in and be so committed to it?
SOREN JONZZON: I think it's kind of a culture that's passed down. My freshman year when we came in, it was very much kind of the seniors and upperclassmen really showed us this is the way we do things and everyone buys in. We made an effort to pass that culture down.

It really starts off the ice and guys being one big unit. And I think that that's really translated for us. And I think that guys have bought in because they know the guy next to them is buying in. If you know the guy that's next to you is going to do everything in his power, then you want to fight for him. It's one of the things that snowballs back and forth between the guys.

Q. Soren, you were a freshman on the 2013 team that went to the Frozen Four. And I know that it was a crushing defeat in the finals. What did you guys learn from that that you bring to this Frozen Four?
SOREN JONZZON: I mean, I think one big thing for us is just that anything can happen on a given day. At this point in the year it doesn't matter what rankings have. It doesn't matter what our records are, it's all going to come down to what happens tomorrow night.

You look at our freshman year. We played Yale four times that year and we won three of them, and unfortunately we lost the last one. So, I mean, it doesn't matter what's happened. It doesn't matter what the score their game against Denver was or our score against BC was. Nobody cares what happened yesterday. It's all about tomorrow. And I think as long as we're focused on that, we'll provide ourselves the opportunity to succeed.

Q. On the eve of the championship, how do you guys and the rest of the team stay loose?
DEVON TOEWS: I think it's just same routine. We usually show up, when we're on the road we always show up a day before and guys just kind of relax and hang out. We hang out with each other and enjoy each other's presence. I think we're going about it the same way we usually do.

Q. I just wanted to follow up on that. You've got a mix now of guys that have been to this point before and some other guys who haven't. Are there things that you're trying to do and talk to those guys about to make sure that they're ready to go tomorrow night?
SOREN JONZZON: I think the biggest thing for us is focusing on the game. There's a lot of extracurricular things going on, whether it's the red carpet and Frozen Fest, it's exciting and fun for us. We're going to enjoy every second of it.

But the bottom line is we're focused on the game and we've got to focus on what's happening inside the glass. If we play our game, we're going to provide ourselves an opportunity to win. As long as we stay focused on the hockey and kind of not all the other things, I think the guys will be ready to go.

MODERATOR: Thank you. Questions for Coach.

Q. Brad Berry said looking at these two teams he feels they're a mirror image; that you both like to be aggressive on the forecheck, that you like to be the team that pressures. Do you see that? When you face a team that's similar, if you agree, when you face a team like that, do you have to adjust or can you just play that style?
COACH PECKNOLD: I would agree. I love the way North Dakota plays. I think Berry has done a phenomenal job getting his team prepared for each and every game. I don't know how many I've watched on TV. I watched a few and then saw them last night. They just go. They pressure.

I was really impressed with a few of the backchecks they had. Kids were out of the play and they came back hard, which is something we do.

There are similarities. Certainly they have some high-end draft picks that we have to be aware of and some high-end skill guys. In the end, we have to do well what we do well. It's why we win. We're 42 games in here. And we play to our identity. If we do that, we get rewarded.

Q. Any difference in the preparation for this game versus three years ago?
COACH PECKNOLD: Um, no, I don't think so. I think we played really well in that game, as I said many times. I thought we had a really good effort that night. And just didn't go our way. Again, if you go back to that game, we had a break-away. The score is 0-0. We didn't score. When of our best players had the break-away. We had a half empty net, another one of our players, he missed it. We could be up 1-0, 2-0 and it's a different game.

I think we prepared well for that day. I think we prepared well for St. Cloud, the win over them. Just as we prepared well for the win against BC. I thought we were good, weren't perfect, but we were pretty good last night.

The more I watched tape of last night's game, I think we were better than I thought. I was a little frustrated with some of the stuff at the end, and that's me being a coach, not being excited about the moment but how do we get better. That's what drives me.

But watching the tape, we were even better than I thought. We won a lot of battles. Our sticks were in good lanes. Pressure was relentless. Some of the BC kids are real high-end kids. They would beat one or two guys, and there was a third guy, and that's what we talk a lot about.

And so we will prepare for North Dakota. It's a great hockey team. Well-coached. But in the end we have to take care of ourselves and play to our abilities, and that's where we'll get our success.

Q. When you were hired way back when to coach this program at $6,700 a year and holding midnight practices and driving however long it was round trip to get there, if you were to suggest back then a moment like this, or 2013 even, people would be skeptical at best. Did you see it? Did you imagine it down the line? When it wasn't realistic, how did you keep driving to get to a place like this?
COACH PECKNOLD: That wasn't even close to my thought process in year one. Again, it was survival. It was getting through. My initial, when I took the Quinnipiac -- I needed the job. I needed to do something. My plan was, okay, this may be the worst Division III team in the country. I'll build it up in two or three years and I'll move on to something better where I can actually make money and survive.

And then as we got going and years two, three, four got better and all of a sudden we announced we're going to go Division I, even at that point you look at -- it was the MAC, which is now Atlantic Hockey, was formed. It wasn't formed to be a full-blown Division I hockey league. We had two scholarships out of the gate. Initially there were a lot of ADs that were fighting to limit the league to only four scholarships. Like that was what we were going to max out at was four instead of the 18. Jack McDonald, my boss, my AD, was pushing for 18. We were only going to have two, but he was like you never know, down the road something might change.

And then we started with 11. Because 18 and four, we met in the middle. That's how we got to 11. But I think even at that point it wasn't realistic. If you look at the early years of Atlantic Hockey -- or the MAC, sorry, no one would play us. It's so unbelievable to me. Like that first year of the MAC, we didn't play one game outside our league against the four major conferences. It is absolutely unbelievable that happened. And it did.

Now all these new teams come in, everybody's like we'll play Arizona State. Everybody does. I do it too. But back then it was like all eight teams all went D-I at once. And I think the big boys were all kind of like what's going on here. You'd think somebody would get a game, and we couldn't get any games. It was crazy. To would think we would get at that stage, even in year five, no, we weren't at that point.

I think where you start looking down the road and maybe we have a chance at this is when we went in the ECAC, luckily Vermont left and gave us that opening, we got in. And then we built our rink. It's one of the best rinks in college hockey, and that's when all of a sudden things changed for us.

Q. Some of the North Dakota guys were talking about the specific challenges that the 1-3-1 presents. Wondering obviously you guys want to pressure as well. Is there an ideal balance of how much you're in the 1-3-1 and how much you're in the forecheck and at the same time are there certain parts of the way the play develops that you want your players to recognize in terms of where they go?
COACH PECKNOLD: First off, we refer to it as a 1-1-3. You can call it whatever you want. Some people call it a left wing lock, which is not the right term. I think for us it's something that we're good at. It's something that allows us to kind of clog up the neutral zone a little bit. Our guys buy into it. We put players in the right positions to be successful.

I don't want to get into all the intricacies of running a good 1-1-3 but it definitely caused problems for BC last night. And it's a good equalizer when you go up against three first rounders and three second rounders and teams like that, slows people down a little bit.

But in the end it's not just about our 1-1-3, like we want to go play offense, we want to go forecheck. We got some good goals off forechecks last night. Unfortunately I thought we sat back a little bit after we got 2-0. But we want to go play offense too. It's not a passive 1-1-3, it's aggressive, and we want to gap up and create turnovers and deny time in space.

Q. You talked about doing well what you do well, and obviously the power play has been a big part of your team's success here. On the other side, their P.K. has been really strong, and it was again last night. When you have strength going up against strengths like that, how important is it to establish the power play when you get the opportunities tomorrow night?
COACH PECKNOLD: I think for our power play it's, again, about us against a P.K. as good as North Dakota's or anyone we play that has a good one, it is about us realizing that we are going to fail probably 70 percent of the time. That's okay. 30 percent power play would be good. We don't talk about goals; we talk about good looks. And we want to get good looks. We have to take what they're going to give us and be able to adapt.

And I think that's one reason that Toews unit is so good. We have a little bit of production on the second unit, too. But I think the first unit really adapts well to what teams are going to give us. Reid Cashman does a great job. He runs that power play.

I think in the end we have a good P.K., a good goalie. We gotta take away his eyes, get in his face a little bit and really try to score gritty, greasy goals. If you look at our power play goal last night, it was bang around and tap it in.

And so that was a pretty normal goal for how we score. Sometimes we will score that pretty one. Sam will put one on the bar or something like that. But in the end, when you play good goalies and good teams, you've got to get greasy net front.

Q. What has Tom Hilbrich and the guys who aren't seeing ice time really done to elevate this team, to build that unit as you've talked about all year?
COACH PECKNOLD: Tommy, he's only played in three games. He's a senior. He's one of our leaders. It's an unusual situation, but he's an A-plus character person, phenomenal in the weight room, phenomenal off the ice.

I can't say enough good things about him. It is unusual that you have a kid that doesn't play a lot that's one of your leaders. He's just an awesome person and he does a lot for us, for our culture and us winning.

Q. Rand, I was talking to Kevin McKernan earlier in the week about being the only Massachusetts kid on the team, he gets your first goal last night. Now he's the only Massachusetts kid left in the tournament. He was saying that when he was a young kid, his folks had season tickets to BC. He went there for a couple of years. It was his dream to maybe go to a Boston school. I'm wondering from your perspective how difficult has it been over the course of your tenure to compete against the Boston schools Beanpot schools with the kids that want to go there?
COACH PECKNOLD: It's hard. All the kids out east are BU, BC, Harvard. They all are. Those three schools can't take every kid. The way recruiting works now, kids are committing at 15, 16 years old. And a lot of them don't pan out.

So there's a lot of good players left over, and I think that's where you see a Quinnipiac or a Lowell or other schools doing well at finding diamonds in the rough. Like a Timmy Clifton for us who has blossomed. Or we go elsewhere. Our roster, we have kids from all over. We do well in British Columbia, we do very well in nontraditional areas like California, Florida, Texas.

But in the end we'll go wherever we need to go. We've got some great Massachusetts players, Kevin has been great, Danny Federico was our captain last year. We've done well with Mass kids. There's no question, it's difficult. Out east you have those three, and then in the Midwest you have three or four schools that get all the top players. Again, when you're committing at 15, 16 years old, they don't all pan out.

Q. Yesterday Denver wasn't able to match up against North Dakota's top line. How much of a factor do you expect having last line change able to be tomorrow in tomorrow's game?
COACH PECKNOLD: Certainly I've got to have it. We got late in the year. And I don't remember which week it was, but us and North Dakota kind of went back and forth in the PairWise. And I felt it was really important for us to be the No. 1 overall seed so we could have last change.

There are times we use it to our advantage, and there are times we don't. Last night I didn't feel we needed to use it as much because I didn't think there was much difference between -- like I didn't know what BC's third line was. They have three lines that were just loaded. So we didn't worry as much about it.

I think with North Dakota, with that big first line, we do have to be conscious of that. And we will adapt and adjust, and we'll probably use two lines to match up against them because we also want to stay in our flow. I'm really big on that. We want to keep our flow and our tempo.

So we respect that line, and we'll have to defend it well. And we'll certainly have our number one matchup when we get against it, but we won't do it all the time. We'll have a second line that will be able to go against it too.

Q. Four of the past five national champions have been first-time champions. What does it say about the state of college hockey right now and how do you hope to continue that trend tonight?
COACH PECKNOLD: I think college hockey is in a great place right now. I think it's phenomenal. We've got a lot of parity. A lot of new teams that are doing really well, and as you can see by the results. And I think it's really good for the game. I think it's great for the game. It's in a great place.

Q. You mentioned Reid Cashman. How important was he? Probably your first nationally recognized player in the development of your team, getting him to the next level?
COACH PECKNOLD: We've had a lot of things that have put us on the map. But Reid was our first All-American. I believe he was a three-time All-American. I could be wrong. I know sometimes the websites do All-American -- I know we got it for three times, I don't know if it was the official one. He was a big-time player for us in Atlantic Hockey.

I remember Reid, his sophomore year, he led our league in scoring, which is the first time a defenseman had done that. Then we were going to the ECAC, and everybody is, oh, he won't do it, he won't do it in that league, boom. He was just a great player. Really fortunate to have Reid on our staff. He's one of the best assistants in the game. And Billy Riga, my other guy, is one of the best guys in the game. They're a big reason why we're here.

I know I'm the one that gets up here, getting the accolades and stuff. But my staff is awesome. They really are. They do a lot. I've matured as a coach and learned that I need to use them, and I do use them a lot. I probably use them as much as any head coach would. I know a lot of guys -- I use the term they don't want to give up the whistle. A lot of head guys want to run everything. We've got a great system going, and those guys are phenomenal for me.

Q. With three losses you guys are in pretty unique territory. There aren't too many teams in the history of college hockey that have that kind of a record go back to Maine in '93 teams that had fewer losses than that. I know you're on the verge of one more big game, can you put it in perspective what it's like for the this team and having only three losses here?
COACH PECKNOLD: Again, I respect the question, but for me, like I don't want to focus on that right now. Like it is obviously a great accomplishment. That's something, me personally, I'll deal with after the season. Right now we have to stay in the moment. And we've got one more game against a phenomenal team, maybe the best team in the country that we have to play tomorrow night.

So we'll reflect on that afterwards. Please don't take that as disrespect of me not wanting to talk about it. We've had 42 games here. We've had a plan. And we need to do it again one more time. And we'll stay focused on that. I will gladly answer that question tomorrow night if you like, though.

MODERATOR: Thank you.

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