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NCAA MEN'S FROZEN FOURApril 9, 2014Nate CondonDon LuciaKyle RauPHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA THE MODERATOR: We finish the day with the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers. Don Lucia is in his 27th year as a collegiate head coach, 15th at Minnesota and back in the Frozen Four. And Don, been here a short time, but thoughts going into the tournament tomorrow? COACH LUCIA: It's obviously exciting. I'm really proud of our team and what they've been able to accomplish this year. It's a tremendous Frozen Four field. Probably one of those years where any of the four teams could win it. I think it's going to make for an exciting tournament for the fans. I think from what I've seen so far, Philly has done a great job as a host. It's a great building. The downtown area, I think for a lot of our players and I can speak for myself, I've never been here before. So it's kind of nice to go to a new area, new venue and to play in another Frozen Four. THE MODERATOR: Nate, you been here before to Philly? NATE CONDON: No, I haven't. Took advantage of last night. I know a bunch of guys went out to get Philly cheesesteaks and try to take in a little bit of the experience. THE MODERATOR: Kyle, did you get a cheesesteak too? KYLE RAU: No, I didn't get one. I sat in my room all night. But we got a nice view of the Rockies game from the hotel. THE MODERATOR: Is that not part of the diet going into the game? KYLE RAU: No, I'm not going to have one of those. I'm eating healthy tonight. THE MODERATOR: Don, Philly cheesesteak? COACH LUCIA: I didn't get one last night. But the guys were kind of split what they like better. They tried both. They did what they were supposed to do when they came here. They better not choose one over the other is what I hear. Q. Coach, I know you said you hadn't been here before, but now that you're here, I'm sure you know this is a city that loves its hockey. It's rabid for the Flyers and it's got that going for it. But it doesn't have college hockey in the Division I level in the city, and it doesn't have that incredible sort of grass roots to pro hockey culture that Minnesota is renowned for. For people who are from here and haven't experienced that, can you talk about what it means to you from your perch, that hockey culture in Minnesota from the grass roots all the way up and how important it is for you? COACH LUCIA: It's kind of funny. Actually I was drafted by the Flyers back in 1978, but like any good man you have to know your limitations, so I got into coaching instead. I also had a buddy that I grew up with that played at the University of Pennsylvania. It was after his freshman year that they ended up dropping the program. He stayed here, and I'm looking forward to actually seeing him this weekend. The great thing about Minnesota, especially with the Wild coming back, is that we do encompass from the youth hockey, the grass roots and its unique in Minnesota, is that you do play for your local youth team and youth players grow up and end up playing for their local high school team. So our system in Minnesota is based like every other scholastic basketball and football where you're growing up in your community and you play for your high school. You have the opportunity. There is junior hockey in the state of Minnesota. We all know we have a number of tremendous college teams at the Division I level, and certainly at the Division III level as well, and the NHL. I think that everybody kind of gets along with each other. The NHL and the wild have done a tremendous job with the grass roots and promoting all of hockey. We have our hockey day in Minnesota, and that's one of the things that's really tremendous. You look at the state of Pennsylvania now. We've added Penn State and formulated in the Big Ten, which is great. I was just talking to Kevin Sneddon, and he mentioned that Penn State played Vermont here, and they had 17 thousands people. But certainly I grew up watching plenty of pro hockey to know how big and how passionate the Flyer fans are. And hopefully a number of those will certainly be in the building this weekend, because they're going to see four tremendous college hockey teams. THE MODERATOR: Kyle, what is the college experience like? What are some of the highlights not necessarily on the ice? KYLE RAU: Away from the ice, it's just awesome. Being from a suburb of Minneapolis, I'm 20 minutes away from my parents and where I grew up. I had season tickets when I was younger going to the Gophers game. So it's special playing for the Gophers. It's awesome. The fans are great. There is a lot of passion towards Minnesota hockey, especially our college program we've got at the university. THE MODERATOR: What do you have to add to that? NATE CONDON: Coming from outside of state, I'm from Wisconsin, so I'm kind of the odd ball on the team. But it's great. You really see just helping out at camps and stuff in the summer what kind of passion they have in Minnesota for the sport. It's been fun for me really just stepping in and seeing that and kind of learning how things are in Minnesota. Wisconsin might be a step behind, but it's really fun and a really different experience at Minnesota. THE MODERATOR: Behind maybe in hockey, but certainly not in the NFL, right? NATE CONDON: Yeah, go Packers. Q. Nate, you and three other seniors have been in the Frozen Four before. What advice have you passed on to the rest of the team? NATE CONDON: Well, the thing that we kind of talked about is last time we were here it was kind of while we were still in the rebuilding stage of our team. We were really happy to be here and we had a great time in Tampa Bay. But the mentality really wasn't there that we came for a championship. Obviously, wanted to win, but it wasn't the same feeling that we have this time. This time our team is expected to do well and we're expected to win championships. That's been the mindset all season is that we're expected to win, and we were supposed to finish top of the Big Ten, finish top in the country the whole season. So I think the mentality is that we're here to win, and that's what we're trying to preach to the younger guys. Q. Nate, in the Frozen Four teleconference you said something about how rewarding it's been to watch the freshmen this season. Can you talk about what they and the sophomores have brought in terms of enthusiasm to this particular venue? NATE CONDON: Yeah, we might be a little different because we have some younger guys, guys that come straight out of high school. They bring a really youthful experience to us. I had to play two years of juniors in order to make the next step for college. I'm an older guy, but it's fun to hang around the younger guys. You know, they're a little different in they like different trends. I always give Brady Skjei a hard time. He's my roommate on the road and he listens to One Direction all the time and I can't stand it. But on the ice, it's a lot of fun with those guys. Being paired with Cammarata and Kloos all season. They're really talented offensively. They're really great players. It's just a matter of I had to show them the ropes in the beginning of the year of how to be defensive and be a college hockey player. So it's been a little different for me this year as I kind of had to help coach up some of the younger guys and their defensive habits. But it's been rewarding to see them kind of come into their own this season. Q. Coach, you mentioned this briefly a minute ago, but if you could expand on the importance of the Big Ten creating its own ice hockey conference and what that's going to do to grow the sport nationally in its profile? COACH LUCIA: Any time you can add a brand school like Penn State, it's good for college hockey. One thing that's unique about our sport is that we have Division I, Division II, and Division III institutions. You see it here. Union is a Division III institution, but what makes our sport so great is that they all can compete on equal footing, and that doesn't happen really in any other sport at the NCAA level. But any time you can bring in a brand name, for some people it was difficult with the dominos that fell. I think we all knew playing at a Big Ten school and coaching, if another team added, a sixth team, we were going to have a Big Ten hockey conference. So there were some dominos that affected that, and some different conferences were formed. There is a lot of angst. But I think this year proved that the WCH that remained was a very good conference, a very competitive conference with like schools. The new NCHC is an outstanding conference with for the most part Division I‑AA institutions. So I think we found out that everybody's going to be okay, and we can schedule a lot of non‑conference games against each other, which I think is healthy. But the bottom line is that any time you can add a brand name, it's good for TV. The Big Ten I thought the network did a terrific job televising Big Ten games this year. We had our doubleheaders on Friday night, and obviously that was good for the Big Ten teams, but it's also good for college hockey. There are more games on now than ever before between the CBS Sports Network, NBC Sports. It's like anything, with TV ratings, you want brand name schools so when people turn it on, they recognize the names. I think that's where it's been good. Hopefully in the next three, four, five years there will be another couple schools that will add hockey, but that remains to be seen. I don't think there is anything on the horizon right now. Q. Understanding that the Frozen Four is much bigger than any rivalry. Can you explain the rivalry to people in Philadelphia? How crazy did it get over the years? COACH LUCIA: Well, it's probably equated to football Giants and Eagles. That's probably a good rivalry. But basketball, NorthCarolina‑Duke. I think if you look over the years, I didn't play at Minnesota, but grew up in the state, NorthDakota is the more rural school. Minnesota is their neighbors, and NorthDakota is right on the border. If you go back to rivalries maybe in the '70s, and '80s, when NorthDakota was predominantly Canadian, Minnesota for the most part has been Minnesota kids, I think that's where the rivalry really, really got going. It's like anything. You've got two programs that have excelled, a lot of outstanding hockey players that have come through that are playing in the National Hockey League. Two programs where it's important to the fan bases and their communities that they do have success, and between the two schools there's been an awful lot of success over the years. So the rivalry at times is fierce, I think. But at the same time, if you talk to the coaches and players, for the most part it's been respectful. I think there is a lot of respect on both sides of it. Those games usually bring out the best. It's a little different this year that we're not in the same conference, so it does feel a little bit different. I think you'll see both teams play certainly under control in a game of this magnitude tomorrow night. But the bottom line is you get to this stage of the tournament, you're going to see outstanding teams and outstanding programs. In many ways with the break‑up of the WCHA, it probably is fitting that Minnesota and NorthDakota play again this year, and if they were going to play, this had to be on the national stage of an NCAA Tournament. THE MODERATOR: Kyle, what about the rivalry? KYLE RAU: It's awesome. I think it's one game that when we moved to the Big Ten -- it's one game I'm certainly going to miss, all the NorthDakota guys are going to miss and all my teammates will miss too. It's one of those games you see on the schedule and you kind of circle it. All games are important, but this one was the biggest one. Now we get to play them, it's awesome because that was something I was definitely going to miss. NATE CONDON: Yeah, being my senior year, I obviously wanted to go out against NorthDakota and play them at least one last time. Got it set up perfectly to play them in the Frozen Four, and this would be my last shot to play against them. Over the years there have always been close games and heated rivalries. While I've been here it's always been you had to go through NorthDakota to win a championship. That was what it was like my sophomore year. When we went to the Frozen Four, we had to beat NorthDakota to go there. It's always been a fun game, and always been top talent playing against each other and getting the best out of each other. Q. Obviously having good goaltending is something that you need to get here, but how important was the steadiness of Adam Wilcox early in the season maybe while your team was still developing? NATE CONDON: It was great knowing that we had that solid foundation to build off of. Obviously, Adam did a great job last season for us and stepped in and played right there. So we knew coming into the season that he was going to be good for us, and that he was going to be our back stop. We do have a young team, so it's hard for guys to step in and play right away. I think maybe that helped some of our freshmen defensemen really get in the hang of things, maybe some of the older guys finding new roles on the team. Anytime you have that kind of good base on your team, you can experiment with a lot of other things, and I think it helped us do that early in the year. KYLE RAU: I think the biggest thing about having Adam in the net is he lets everyone relax a little bit. If you make a mistake, you know Adam's going to bail you out nine times out of ten. So it helps everybody play loose, especially for the young guys. It lets them play their game and not worry about the mistakes because we know Adam's going to bail you out. COACH LUCIA: When the year was beginning we knew we obviously had to replace a lot of talent, including three defensemen. And number 4 departed early, so we knew Kyle was going to have to move from wing to center. So we had a lot of question marks on how the puzzle was going to be pieced together. The one thing as a coach that you know is comforting is you knew you had an outstanding goaltender to build from. If you were going to make mistakes, that he could cover up some of those especially early in the year as it takes time for the young guys to learn, you know what, you better make sure you're backchecking all the time or you better be in the proper position defensively. What Adam allowed us to do, what I think most about Adam as a goaltender is he makes the big save at a critical point of a game. If it's tied in the third, he makes a big save to keep it tied to allow us to get the game winner. If we're ahead by a goal, he makes a critical save with five minutes to go to allow us to win a game. I think that's, more than anything else, is what Adam has been able to do for this team and the consistency. I look at Adam, he probably had one game he was a little bit off, and that was a UMD game back in November. Other than that, for the most part he's going to give up one or two goals a night. If we get to three, most nights we're going to win. THE MODERATOR: Sounds like he goes in just one direction. COACH LUCIA: Oh, that's pretty good. THE MODERATOR: Coach, what about the marathon? Are your players taking after you running the marathon? COACH LUCIA: Yeah, I ran the Twin Cities in the fall. It was my mid‑life crisis. It was a lot cheaper than a sports car, I can tell you that. Couple of new pair of tennis shoes. You know what, I ran one in the early '80s, and I was sick a couple years back. So it was to prove myself I was all the way back. A lot of time, as far as I'm concerned, a marathon is about two or three miles too long. I did it under my goal of four hours. And I proved to these guys the old man in the room still has it. It was funny, I think I went right from the finish to our training room, because I wanted to make sure our trainer was there and could work on me getting an ice tub. Some guys watched me limp in. They didn't even know how long a marathon was. Different generation, but they know who One Direction is, right? But you know what, it was a great experience. I'm glad I did it, but I think I'll stick to running about five miles a day. That's good enough. It's a long grind, that's for sure. But it's good to see I did it, and it was for a good cause. Raised some money for Defending the Blue Line. I was part of that team too, so what a great, worthy cause that was as well. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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