Dave Hakstol Guys Quotations

One thing I really like about these guys is that they're not afraid to play. If they make a mistake, they're not afraid to go out there the next shift. The first half (of the season) as a freshman, there is a pretty big learning curve. The only way to go through it is to experience it, if you have the mental ability and toughness.

The plain fact is that some guys really have to look deep within themselves and figure out how badly they want to play. You can't come out and play rope-a-dope for two periods. On our home ice, you don't want to leave a game to a bounce of the puck in the last 20 minutes and we did. And this is what you get, a 1-0 loss.

Guys that have got it done in the past, they know how to elevate their game at the right time. There is a connection there. Guys have that attitude and expectation of themselves to win.

Jordan elevated his game once again toward the second half of the year, as he's done before. He's the leader for us in the locker room and he carries that onto the ice with him. I believe our guys play a little extra hard with him in the nets. At this time of year I wouldn't trade him for anybody.

I wasn't here, but I've heard so many things about the job they did in 1997. We've only been in town for a few hours, but everybody has been first class in every way. I think that makes it easy for our guys to concentrate on the job at hand.

We've got some guys back there who can bring some offensive ability and make some offensive plays. That's part of being a good offensive team. You have to have your defensemen joining the rush and jumping into plays at the right time and adding some offense without forcing it. That's something young guys grow into.

We're not going to expect a guy to jump into the league his first year and lead the WCHA in defenseman scoring. That's not realistic. I think our young guys are doing a good job, but they can continue to get better and continue to add more offense. We want them to do that.

That's hockey sense. You saw some chemistry between some of our forward units tonight. Guys made some great plays.

The No. 1 thing it says is that what our team is doing offensively maybe gets more of the headlines. But if you take a close look at this team, they're a group of guys who take a lot of pride in good team defense.

All the way through, our forward units did a good job and worked extremely hard down low. Michigan Tech is tough to play against. It was an awfully tight hockey game going into the third period. But the guys continued to do the little things and eventually they were rewarded for it.

(The freshmen) made a lot of plays in a lot of areas of the game, not only getting on the score sheet. Guys made plays in all three zones in the rink. That's positive.

Those two guys we have in back will have a lot of stability for us. They can give a lot of confidence to the guys playing in front of them.