Friday morning marked the final full hockey practice of the season for the University of Minnesota Duluth. The Bulldogs, who took down the University of Notre Dame in the Frozen Four semifinals the previous afternoon at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, will butt heads with the University of Michigan for the national championship Saturday everning.
Following Friday' s skate, head coach Scott Sandelin and various Bulldog players had these things to the media:
Coach Sandelin on the ride the team has been on: Aside from early in the year when we were ranked No. 1, we've kind of gone under the radar a little bit. That's what happens when you have good teams in your league. North Dakota started to take off, Denver had a great year, Omaha had a great year, CC really started coming on at the end of the year, and obviously, all the teams throughout the country with the years that they had. So we kind of started sliding down and, I think to some degree, that's kind of how we are, maybe a little bit under the radar … Watching the selection show, there was a mention of who Union was playing, (and) our guys kind of got a laugh at that. And understandably, both Yale and Union had tremendous years, and we were playing out in their backyards. We were OK with that. We've been a good road team all year. It's just kind of how it's been … All those things kind fit in to what we are. We haven't been here a lot. We do have a strong tradition, we've had a lot of great players. When you're only in this Frozen Four for the fourth time, not a lot of people may know about you. Hopefully, they do now.
Coach Sandelin on the players playing like “rink rats” with confidence: A lot of those guys play in the 'AHL' after (practice) with the coaches. It's basically what it is, it's rink rats. They have pretty competitive games. Quite frankly, before the Notre Dame game, we had our two coaches run a mock power play unit with three other players. Derek (Plante) and Brett (Larson), those two are just like players. You've got to know those guy, they're just like kids. They want to keep playing.
Kyle Schmidt on what Friday night will be like as he gets ready to play the biggest game of his life on Saturday: Starting two weeks ago every game was the biggest game of my life and Saturday will be the same. Tomorrow night will be huge and hopefully I got all the jitters out last night. I had a tough time falling asleep last night, hopefully that is out of the way and I can fall asleep tonight. Hopefully me and my roommates can calm each other down.
Mike Connolly on facing a hot goaltender in Michigan goaltender Shawn Hunwick: Obviously he shut the door against North Dakota. He played a great game. He's aggressive and he challenges a lot, so we're going to look to get him moving side to side. The way he played against North Dakota [shows that] it's going to be tough. We got to get some pressure on him and take a lot of shots in front of the net.
Justin Fontaine on his three assists in the semifinal: It was good to have a good game here in the championships on the power play. I thought me and Justin Faulk moved the puck well together up top and just allowed our low guys to make plays and score. It was good to see them all finish and get on the score sheet.
