Head Coach Andy Murray

Tonight's intensity level?

I thought we came out with good intensity last night, as well. We gave up 23 shots in that hockey game, and, what, 20 tonight? Our starts are fine. Part of the issue has been our play in second periods. And here, tonight, we took five minor penalties in the second  period. That's unacceptable. But we play hard, we compete, we battle every single night. We don't cheat anybody with our effort. If you want to watch some hardworking athletes, come and watch Bronco hockey. We worked hard tonight and were deserving of the win. Giving credit to St. Lawrence, they've got a tremendous power play. They've got some of the best forwards in college hockey and you give them a chance in the power play and they're very dangerous. So we've got some coachable moments from tonight's game that we need to look at and address with the team on Monday, but we're pleased to get this first win of the season. It was big for our team tonight. These are tough games to play for us. We generated 40 shots, hit a number of goalposts again here tonight, and sometimes those games go the other way as it did last night, but we found a way to stick with it and get the job done.

Offensive play

Well, you generate 40 shots, and you have the number of scoring chances that we had in the game, you have to believe that if you continue to do that, the puck's going to go in the net. I think Chase Balisy's probably played two of the best games he's ever played. He played tremendous. He skated better, he drew some penalties. To me, I thought our game was strong. Unfortunately, we spent too much time in the penalty box in the second period, and it's tough to have offensive rhythm when you're sitting in the penalty box. We took some unneccessary penalties. We play hard, we're physical, but we need to be smarter with that.

Penalty kill

Obviously when you give up four powerplay goals in a weekend, our percentages aren't very good. So we need to do a better job. Again, I credit their team. They have one of the best power plays in college hockey, they've got three scorers that are tremendous offensive players, and they get that extra room in the power play. I thought five-on-five we did a real good job against that unit. I thought the Warda, Beebe, Elias unit did a real good job. But you give them chances in the power play and they're gonna hurt you. We killed five penalties in the second period, so you're wearing yourself out killing penalties and you're using your penalty killers and your offensive guys are losing the rhythm of the game. So we need to be smarter. But I love the intensity that our team plays with. We had our '85-'86 championship team here tonight. They came and talked to our players today, and all of them were at the Joe last year when we won the CCHA. We wanted to win a game tonight for them.

Garrett Haar

I'm just starting to get the puck on net and stuff's starting to fall. Coach has always harped on me for just getting the puck through. And that's what I've been doing, and things are falling in.

Goal

I saw I had the open lane. I didn't have any passes. So, might as well just get the puck on net. That's it. That's what I did. Saw an opening, and put it where I had to put it.

Important win tonight?

Absolutely. Going into the third, we're not a team that really worries, but we knew what we had to do. After last night, obviously we were disappointed, but I thought we came back tonight and played really hard int he first and third periods. Second period we struggled a little bit, but obviously in the third we came back and did what we had to do. So it was an exciting game.

Physicality, penalties

I think we're playing really well. We're a young team. We're still working out some kinks. We're gonna come back on Monday and work at it. We're a work in progress for sure, but I know that within a couple weeks we're gonna find our groove.

Dan DeKeyser

Power play and penalty

This year, special teams have been huge so far. The refs have been really cracking down on little stuff in front of the net. But our power play, we had chances yesterday and couldn't really put any home. But I thought tonight we played a lot better and our penalty kill did as well.

Third period

After that second, it kind of seemed like a parade into the penalty box. So that was something we definitely wanted to change. We made sure we talked about it in the locker room after that period, and came out in the third, I thought right from the first shift we came out with a lot more energy than we had in the second and that we just turned up our energy level as a whole. That really helped us to pull it together.

Goal

I was just trying to move in and keep pressure on their forwards to try to get a tie goal. It was kind of a lucky bounce. Walters was working hard down in th corner, came out front, and it hit his skate or something, I don't think anybody really knew I had the puck. I just kind of picked a corner and it went in.

Penalty kill

That's something we've got to work on a little bit, but I mean five-on-five I think we took it to them for the most part. I think our penalty kill stepped up when it had to tonight, though. We can definitely sharpen that up a bit.

Going forward

It feels great to get that monkey off our back, you know. I know there are some high expectations, but it's not going to be easy this year and we know that. Like you saw this weekend, they gave us all we could handle. We really have to step it up, even another notch or two here, and step up our play.