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NCAA MEN'S FROZEN FOURApril 9, 2014Rick BennettMat BodieDaniel CarrShayne GostisbeherePHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA THE MODERATOR: We have Union College with us. Welcome to Philadelphia. You may have seen the news come out, our Spencer Penrose Award recipient as the Division I "Coach of the Year", Rick Bennett, congratulations, and we'll start with you with your opening thoughts. COACH BENNETT: I guess you're probably getting sick of this one, but we are as a group here, it's great to be here. We're coming back for a second time in three years. We feel very, very honored, privileged. I want to say congratulations to BC, Minnesota, and NorthDakota as well. We're looking forward to playing here tomorrow night. THE MODERATOR: Mat, I know you just got here. You're at the Frozen Four. Thoughts, you've been here before? MAT BODIE: Happy to be back and hopefully we can do a little bit better than we did last time. Philly is a great city. Love it here. We're just excited to play. We're ready to go get prepared for BC and really excited to be playing. THE MODERATOR: Daniel, you spent a lot of time here in Philly? Have you been here before? DANIEL CARR: First time. THE MODERATOR: Shayne, a chance to win a national title? SHAYNE GOSTISBEHERE: Any chance you have to win a national title, it's definitely special. Being here in Philly, it's fun, second time in three years for us now. We're just excited to get on the ice finally and get out of school for the week. But definitely can't wait to play tomorrow. Q. How has the preparation been different from two years ago? Is it more relaxed than it was as you get ready for this game? DANIEL CARR: Yeah, I think we're focused, and more understanding. We're here to play hockey and it's more a business trip than last time. (No microphone). Guys have been good so far, and now we're just trying to focus on tomorrow. SHAYNE GOSTISBEHERE: Like Daniel just said, I think our first time to the Frozen Four we were just happy to be there. Of course we wanted to win. It didn't end up our way, but this year's more business approach here, and we're just looking to do some damage better than we did the last two years or two years ago. MAT BODIE: Yeah, I think guys were a little bit awe struck with everything in Tampa, but definitely not so here. I think the upperclassmen have done a great job of preparing the younger guys. We're just treating it like it is just another hockey game. The net is the same, puck is the same and we'll be ready to go. Q. Daniel, if you could talk about playing this year with Mike Vecchione and him as a center on your line. What's it been like playing with him and what's he been able to bring for you guys? DANIEL CARR: I think Mike's a very dynamic player. I think the biggest thing I've known playing with him, he's a freshman, but he doesn't play like a freshman. I mean, on the forecheck, he's jumping pucks, jumping guys, and I think he's the kind of player that makes the players around him better. I think as a freshman, you can't say that about many. I mean, it's been a lot of fun playing with him. He's scored some really big goals for us down the stretch, especially in Lake Placid. He got a really big one. It's been a blast for me personally. He's a great player, and I think you can expect big things from him to come. Q. Coach Bennett, in a lot of sports in BCS programs, the money from them makes a big difference. Why is this a sport where a school like yours, a Division III in every sport except for hockey, can thrive and have success. With the BCS money flowing in, is there a danger that that could change in the future? COACH BENNETT: I never really got caught up in the BCS and all the money. I know how Union runs and being successful, being a financial aid school, it's worked well. We have a lot of alumni that have really supported our school, and through that, I think we thrive through Union College that way. Q. Shayne, Gaudreau coached you back in the day. I know you skated with Johnny growing up in the same area. What's it mean to come to this venue here in Philadelphia and to go up against a guy like Johnny? SHAYNE GOSTISBEHERE: I'm not from New Jersey, but Johnny, I played with him at the World Juniors. It was the only time I played with him. I played with him younger. He was on the Flyers, and the Junior Panthers. He's a great player. Back then he was the smallest kid. He's an amazing player. Every time he touches the puck something special is going to happen. The crowd gets on their feet. He's not a kid who can just try to hit because he's pretty much unhitable. He's so shifty. He's a great kid. He's a very humble kid too. He was my roommate at the pretournament in Finland, and you couldn't tell he was the best college hockey player because he was so humble about it. He's an easy going kid and definitely a great hockey player. Q. Rick, could you comment on the Penrose Award, what it means to you and what it says about your staff? COACH BENNETT: It means more to our staff than anything. I really do believe it's a staff award, and should be a player award. The players are the ones playing this game, and they make you look good. These guys have done that in my time here at Union College. I'm grateful to them, grateful to the staff. Jason Tapp, Joe Dumais, and John Ronan have done a phenomenal job. They make you look good. I think you've got to put a name to the award, and I guess my name is on that now. But it really belongs to everybody. Q. Shayne, I'm sure you've had some taste by now of how crazy this city is for hockey generally. That's sort of grass roots hockey college is not quite the same as it is in some of the other bigger cities in the country even smaller towns where you guys are. Can you talk about that college hockey culture and maybe what this city might be missing in that regard? Coach Bennett, if you could add on afterwards as well? SHAYNE GOSTISBEHERE: Big difference between college hockey and pro as well. We're not getting paid. We go out there and put our heart on the line. Every guy is playing for the guy next to him. It's 100% all heart out there. College hockey is a dynamic game. Guys are blocking shots that you probably wouldn't see in pro and doing anything for their team just to raise a piece of wood at the end of the year. It's worth everything. But college hockey is definitely a different game to pro. I mean, of course, it's all 100% heart. COACH BENNETT: College versus pro, these guys are here because they came to college to be students first and athletes second. If you wanted to go that pro route, you probably would have gone major junior or go that venue. But it's a great development model here in the college world as I like to call it. Obviously, these guys I'm sitting up here with have aspirations to play on after. But it's also nice to play on after knowing that you have a degree to fall back on. Even if you stay, because we've had guys in the past doing this and that, they have three years, but they're coming back and whatever. So I think it's a great model that way. But I don't think playing for the jersey in college it's something you'll always remember. These guys will remember this until the day they've moved on. It's something that's great. I've never experienced it as a player being just a couple minutes away from it, and still talk to players about it and how we got beat. But these guys have gotten here, and now we want to take it to the next level. This is something that's truly special. Q. Shayne, what is your exposure to Philadelphia? Have you been here before? Have you skated on this ice? Have you been to games here? SHAYNE GOSTISBEHERE: I've never been to a game here. During development camp we came here and had a tour of the locker room and stuff. Nothing too big. Saw the ice. I've never skated here before until an hour ago. But did have a Geno's cheese steak last night, so that was pretty good. Other than that, I haven't seen Philly too much. I came here for a tournament when I was, I think, 9 years old, but I don't remember it that much. But it's definitely been nice. The hospitality has been nice too. Q. What is your reaction having spent an hour out there? COACH BENNETT: It's definitely awesome. You catch yourself just waiting in line for the next rep of the drill. You catch yourself looking around at the banners and stuff. It's pretty cool being in such a building with all this history in it. Q. Sort of the community across college hockey when you go to the Frozen Four, there is a certain tight‑knitness in college hockey, even bigger than in college football and basketball doesn't always exist. COACH BENNETT: Again, that is just watching the basketball recently on TV, it looked like a great following. We feel the same way about college hockey. I think it's going to be a tremendous atmosphere. As players and coaches, we appreciate it. We appreciate our fans. We feel the fans at Union College are supporters of our program and travel well. They're great fans. They're great people. We've enjoyed just being associated with them. We work harder when we put that jersey on and go behind the bench for them. It's tremendous. Being at a venue like this, it's just a once‑in‑a‑lifetime experience. Q. Some of the players were talking about your selection of Rocky II on the bus ride down here. Why you maybe selected that particular movie and maybe some of the players' takes on watching it, and if that gave them a motivational ploy? COACH BENNETT: Is that what they said? Okay. That is the first time I've heard of that one. But you always‑‑ I thought Rocky I was obviously a dynamite movie. But I think you know in the end what happened. I don't think he won, so that's why we threw in Rocky II because he won. There is just a phenomenal movie with a lot of heart, and I think this team embodies that. It has a lot of heart. They come to work in every practice and every game, and going to Philly has that ties as well. So not too much. I wouldn't look into it too much. MAT BODIE: It's a good movie. Coach always just throws on movies that kind of my guess is reflects how he feels about our current road trip. So good movie. Personally, I didn't really watch all of it because I've seen it before, but I'm sure some guys did. SHAYNE GOSTISBEHERE: It was pretty cool to watch it. I'm more of a headphone guy on the bus. It's a movie that's before my generation. But Coach said to me on the bus when we were getting on from a rest stop, Road House is on right now, and Swayze was the man back then. So that was pretty cool. Little better than Rocky, I thought. DANIEL CARR: Well, our movie selections on the road, some might describe them as suspect. It depends who is picking. But I think Coach chose Road House after because I think he thinks his hair looks like Patrick Swayze. That's pretty much all I've got. Q. For people who aren't familiar with college hockey, they'll see the names and they'll see schools that they recognize and they'll see Union. They'll be like okay, Union. So my question is what should they understand about college hockey and sports where this is not unusual for a school or program like yours to be in this position? SHAYNE GOSTISBEHERE: I mean, you can sort of look at the basketball. It's a tournament that anyone could win. The hardest part, I think, is making the tournament. And when you get here, anything can happen. I know people tab Union as a Cinderella, but we just look at ourselves as Union College, and that's pretty much it. THE MODERATOR: Union by the way is the winningest team coming into the Frozen Four with 30 wins. DANIEL CARR: Like Shayne said, we don't put too much emphasis on it. We just figure at this point of the year, all the teams that have gotten here are great teams. I think we've just can't focus on that. We've got to focus on what it's going to take for us to come out on top here. That's been our goal since the start of the year. We just focus on the parts of our game that make us successful going into tomorrow. MAT BODIE: We're a small school in Schenectady, New York. The community does a great job rallying around us. We may not fill a 10,000 seat arena, but we're 2500 every night. It's packed. It's loud, and it's a tough place to play. I think it's just heart of the college hockey atmosphere. Doesn't matter if you're at a big school or small school. Your fan support is great. We're lucky that we chose Union College as a place to play. Q. I was wondering if you guys could talk, you're the only team that won your conference tournament. Is in anything that you can get from winning two games in two nights to kind of translate into needing to win two games this weekend? DANIEL CARR: Yeah, I think you can take a little bit from that, but I think everyone in college hockey plays a two game series every weekend. But I think the tournament performance makes a bit of a difference, because you've got to get more of an understanding that every second matters and every detail matters. I think we learned a pretty lesson there of what it takes, and we've got to continue to take that into this weekend. MAT BODIE: I think all four teams here had to win their regional, and I think all teams can draw experience on that but as far as the one and done goes, you got to play shift‑by‑shift, and not look toward the next game because you might not get it. It's all about being in the moment and just playing in that next shift. Q. Rick and Mat, you guys played BC last year for the first time. Does that give you confidence going into tomorrow's game? MAT BODIE: Yeah, we're just looking at tomorrow's game for what it is. Both teams have a lot of hold overs, but a lot of guys playing big roles, and we're just getting going. But we really haven't watched that game a whole lot and we haven't talked all that much. So we're just prepared for this Boston College team. COACH BENNETT: It is what it is. Last year is last year. I think it's a wash right now. Come 5 being 5:00 o'clock or 5:06, whoever is getting off that bus, whatever team is ready to go. Looking across to your opponent and who has the most heart and gets some bounces here and there, that is who is going to win. Plain and simple. Q. Coach, the fellas earlier said that the first experience Frozen Four was just kind of a happy to be here kind of thing. Do you sense that the team is different first of all? Secondly, what are the challenges from the coaching standpoint to make sure that doesn't occur again. COACH BENNETT: You can tell by their approach up here from the press conference in Tampa until now, just their demeanor in practices, and demeanor today. Had a better practice than we did in Tampa. We were just out there. We were just playing. That's what we're going to do tomorrow. We're an attack type of team, and that's how we're going to approach it. I think through that, you don't worry about how much people are here, where you are. As far as I'm concerned back playing a home game at Union, and that's how we're going to have to deal with it. That's kind of how our feeling is going into it. Q. Mat and Shayne, how much have you guys gotten to watch BC's top line on video, and what it's like preparing for a line that's been that dominant? MAT BODIE: We got to see them a little bit. They're a tremendous line. It shouldn't be about limiting the damage. They haven't been kept off the score sheet all that much all year. It's going to be about taking time and space away. It's not simply a line matching up or D‑pair matching up. It's the five guys on the ice. We work as a unit in the "D" zone, and it's going to be up to everyone to chip in to try to stop those guys. SHAYNE GOSTISBEHERE: Yeah, pretty much we know they're going to get their chances, but it's limiting those chances and making them high percentage chances. Pretty much just playing our "D" zone. Like Bodie said, five‑man unit and lot of communication down there. They're slippery and they can get behind you, we've just got to play our game. Q. Rick, if you could expand on what I asked Daniel about Vecchione? To put a freshman on the center spot in the top line, there is a lot of responsibility there. Could you talk about how he's responded? COACH BENNETT: Well, I think he's earned it just through his play. I thought he started out well in the season. He had an illness around that time, so he's out for like a month. He came back, and maybe that's helped him to where he is today. He's fresh kind of going to somewhere like a Max Novak who missed ten games this year, so in that regard we're seeing the best hockey now. But Daniel's pretty modest as well as these guys up here too, Mat and Shayne, these guys played a ton in their freshman year too. Had a lot of awards, lot of accolades, and Mike is just kind of following suit. Dan was at the top line as a freshman too, and I think he's passed that along, and I'm sure Mat and Shayne have helped them along too. Q. Going back to the Rocky theme, last week Rick said that you guys have been given a little bit of a Rocky tag, kind of an underdog mentality. Is that a mindset you guys prefer? Others have said you're somewhat of a favorite with your unbeaten streak coming into this week now. MAT BODIE: We don't look at ourselves as an underdog or favorite. It's just two great hockey teams playing a game. Whoever executes the best is probably going to win. But as far as the media or outsiders tabbing us as underdog, that's fine. Some people calling us favorites is fine too. We don't put much stock into what other people are saying. We're just trying to keep things in house in the locker room. DANIEL CARR: I think Mat hit it on the head there. All that stuff doesn't come into the locker room, doesn't come into team conversations or what guys are thinking. I mean, it doesn't really affect us whether guys are picking us as a favorite or giving us the underdog tag. I think it comes down to, like Mat said, who executes their systems the best and who wants them more out there. I think that's all we're focused on right now is getting ready for tomorrow. Q. Rick, you talked about how this practice today seemed to be better than the one two years ago in Tampa. Can you describe why, and does it make you feel better about your chances tomorrow? COACH BENNETT: I don't know if it helps our chances. I just know that through our practices hopefully that definitely carries over somewhat. Every guy is different. But I just felt today the guys were more plugged in than the first time around. I thought we were a little starstruck there in Tampa. Me being one of them. It was just one of those‑‑ just being a rookie coach as well, staff, I don't know how you prepare for that. You prepare for that by going through experiences and that's what we did. Here we are again, and I just thought today these guys are plugged in. It's a compliment to the guys I'm sitting up here with. These are the guys that make the practice go, and today they did. Q. Colin Stevens was injured for about four games in the beginning of the year. But since he came back, how have you seen him develop and progress and how important is he to your team? COACH BENNETT: I'll go with the second part. I think the goaltender is very important to your team. As we like to call them, and I've said it about 22,000 times, our sacred seven back there. It's our goalie and our six "D". Colin has to save the puck, our "D" have to get it up to our forwards and that's what they do, and Colin is the backstop of that. He's a very humble guy, honest, so it's easy to play for him. These guys enjoy playing for him. Through his work, and I see this with Jason Tapp and other coaches, he works tremendously hard. He's very willing to get better, and I think through that that's why he's had the season that he's had. He's had some great teachers along the way to help him. Troy Grosenick had a chance to watch Keith Kinkaid a little bit and Corey Milan as well. So he's had a lot of experience to fall back on. Q. When guys get drafted, some of them plateau and don't progress the way that they should. Can you talk about Shayne and what you've seen in the last couple years and maybe the progression that he's taken when the Flyers drafted him? COACH BENNETT: What I said about Colin is probably the same thing I'm going to say about Shayne. He came in obviously had a great‑‑ lot of help. Had a lot of help along the way. Nolan Joseph White I believe was his roommate, and I think that helped a ton. Nolan was a good leader. He's had Mat here. He can fall back on Mat. Through Mat's experience, I think he passed that on too, as well as Dan and what he went through as a freshman. I think the fact that Shayne got better through middle of the year his freshman year in areas of his game where he really decided that this defensive thing is really going to help me here. This is what we talked about in the recruiting trip. This is what he wanted to get better at. The offensive stuff I'm not teaching him. I think it's a gift, just like it is with Mat and Dan. It's just bear down defensively, play the game, at least our coaching staff feels the right way. 100% hockey player instead of 50‑percenter. He's bought into it. That's why it's gotten better, and that's why these guys have gotten better. Q. Rick, going back to the summer, you had Josh Jooris leave early and brought in Michael Pontarelli to replace him. What made you pick Michael to come in, and how do you feel he's adjusted as the year has gone on? COACH BENNETT: I'm not going to sit here and say that was an easy choice. We talked about the staff. But when you're a player of all of Canada, I think it makes it a little easier. Jason Tapp and John Dumais did a phenomenal job in that recruiting process. Michael was willing to come. He wanted to come, and just made it easy. Like I said, he's had a very nice year. He's gone through some ups and downs too like every freshman does, but I think at crucial times he's come up big for us. It just made the decision pretty easy in the fact we did lose a tremendous hockey player in Josh Jooris. He was a super guy in the locker room, team guy, and as we said before, we wish him all the best and still do. It's just a fact that when Mike came, it's a different element, then Josh, and he seems to fit into our team. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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