Head Coach Andy Murray
Overall thoughts on tonights game
“My thoughts on tonight's game are that we are disappointed. We played a hard working, determined North Dakota team that we knew would battle us tooth and nail all weekend and we are unhappy that we did not get a win here tonight, that is the bottom line. Our guys played hard I believe from about when they made it 3-1, we believe they had 3 shots the rest of the hockey game from that particular point on. But we wasted some valuable minutes, we wasted a 5-on-3 opportunity and that is simply not good enough. I put the guys over the boards, I need to make sure they know what they are doing and they do but it did not look like it tonight. That was disappointing in a game where we played hard and we did score two power play goals in the game tonight so to waste that 5-on-3 was very disappointing. We gave our opponents credit, their goaltender had a tremendous weekend, he played very well against us but we can't keep crediting the goaltender, ultimately we need to take responsibility ourselves. We will battle, fight, scratch and claw to try to score some goals but when you don't get it done there are not more victories.”
Thoughts on UND's lack of shots
“Like I said I think they had 3 shots on goal the last period and a half, so I do not think our energy was down. I would agree with you, there was a phase there a little bit last night as well when we made it 1 to nothing and we probably had opportunities to go up 2 or 3 goals in the first period last night we had a breakaway and 3 or 4 looks at the net and didn't score. They are a team that hangs around and they battle you, they have played this way for a long long time. Their program is based on having one outstanding offensive unit, puck moving defenseman, and a bunch of other guys that just battle you all night. We were not good enough to get the job done and our kids are playing hard and we are battling we just need to find a way to win games.”
Lukas Hafner in net
“You know where I thought Lukas was really good tonight to be very honest with you was his ability to move the puck. I thought he really helped our defenseman out when he went in there and really taking Frank out of the game was not anything relative to Frank, it was the fact that we had given up 14 shots and had 3 goals against and I cannot fault him on the goals. Bottom line is we needed to change something in the dynamic of the hockey game and that is why we changed goaltenders. Lukas I think faced 3 shots and certainly one of them was a break by one of the best players in college hockey. He played well certainly under tough circumstances, our team raised the level of their game actually over the first half. We are having trouble finding that recipe for the full 60 minutes and we need to find it.”
Filling Dane Walters
“Nolan Laporte is doing a pretty solid job with that right hand shot, he has 5 or 6 goals now and I think he has done some of that. Colton Hargrove also and Justin Kovacs is a down low player who scored a big goal tonight for his 15th point so he is already scheduled to have more points than Dane had last year as well. I think we have a number of players capable of doing that and again, our game is not devoid of chances, I think that last minute and a half there were probably enough chances for about 6 goals and I liked how our guys battled. We went in with a design when we pulled our goalie and what we were going to do and our guys just hung in there and battled. We need to go on the road now and play a very good Duluth team and we want North Dakota to step into an opponent's rink and play very well and I firmly believe that we will. There are a lot of heads hanging real low in the dressing room right now, they really wanted to knock North Dakota off and they invested a lot of energy but, we need to be a little smarter with our energy.”
Scored 1st and ended up losing (5th time)
“I am certainly not a fan of the word struggled, I think struggling is only when you are not trying and our guys are trying. We haven't finished off the game and it is really interesting because the statistics would tell you that 82.4% of the time when you score the first goal in a hockey game you will win the game and we have not held that statistic to be true, we are definitely on the minus side of that. It shows you that we are coming out of the gate strong, it shows you that we are playing hard, we are ready to play, the thing that is also shows is that we lack maturity in certain areas of the game to make sure that we can maintain that mental focus throughout the hockey game. We have a lot of young players, Colton Hargrove and Nolan Laporte, players like this, sophomores players that were 5-6 points in the season last year, these guys are playing a lot of minutes for us now and we have some young defenseman and that is part of the thing that you go through when you have a lot of young players. We just need to stay with it and if we continue to get leads in hockey games, we have to find a way to win. What I will tell you, we are not going to give up getting the leads in games and play from behind in the hockey game. There are certain words I hate and I hate that word struggle.
Junior Forward Will Kessel
Having lead in both games
“We had good starts both games and its great to get the first goal. Our team has got to work on getting the next goal and the next two and not just being satisfied with the lead and bottom line is we have to stay out of the box and stop giving the other team opportunities to get back in the game. We brought 60 minutes both nights but we need to keep going stronger and stay strong on the puck all night and generate more opportunities.”
Is our team still learning?
“There might still be a bit of a learning curve, we are still developing and we still have a lot more potential on our team. I like where we are at still and we are going to be at a great team this year but we have some work to do.”
Physical—game plan
“We knew ND was a hard working team and an intense team and we wanted to match that and even top that. It was a chippy game regardless, we were going to come and play physical and we did a good job. Our team tried to stay out of the box, when both teams get a penalty, not much you can do about that, you cant get pushed around out there and we had to match that. We just have to keep working and moving our feet and probably avoid the stick penalties, holding penalties, and the lazy penalties.”
Difference of UND than other NCHC teams we have played
“All three teams have been great but they are probably the most physical team we have played so far in conference. They are a good team and we are in a great conference and we are going to match that and be successful.”
