Q. new coach with boston accent, sound familiar.
A. yeah, maybe I'll get mind back. That will be nice. I played for torch before, my first year in pros. So there is some familiarity there.
Q. what was he like?
A. He's hard-nosed. He says it how it is. he was my first pro coach, just coming in, having a coach like him, he tells you how it is. I mean, I don't know how else to say it. I loved playing for him. He likes hard workers. That's how you earn your ice time. And he likes that. He's high on character, and I think we'll play well for him.
Q. frustrating for Yeo to take the fall?
A. Yeah, that's tough, and you have to feel for him. It was everyone in here. And he gets most of the blame, which is a touch thing. Hopefully… he was good to us. He was good to me and he was good to us, and my first coach in this league. He taught me a lot. I ow e him a lot and wish him the best.
Q. is it a new scheme or a new voice that will make the biggest difference.
A. I'm not sure. Never been through this, really. A lot of us haven't been through this. We'll treat it like a clean slate, I think, do what Torch says, and follow his lead and I think it will be good.
Q. good enough to be in playoffs? What has to change for that to happen?
A. yeah, I mean, we were a good team early in the year, then whatever happened happened. We have the guys in here to make the playoffs, and have a deep run. I think everyone else feels the same thing. It's up to us. We have a clean slate. But we have no time to waste. We have to get going, right now.
Q. yeo's voice get stale?
A. I don't know. it's tough to say. Like I said, this is my first time thorugh anything like this. Sitting and thinking about it, you just can't put your finger on it. This is what happens, it's a business, and things like this happen. It's tough, but we're going to go with what I have right now.
Q what happened?
A. It's tough to say. It's not a good feeling. It's frustrating. You try to stay positive through it. when you're winning you have fun, and come to the rink the next day and you feel good, have a good practice and another good game. … When things are opposite. It's almost like it spirals down, and it's a tough think, mentally, to try to get through.
Q. confidence level of this team now
A. It's tough to say. We have a good game, we get a win, we feel good again. It's crazy in this league. You lose and you feel like it's the end of the world. You win and you feel like you're on top of the world. We just have to stay on that even keel and have our confdidence. We have to grow that each game."
PARISE
Q. Today?
A. Practice was good, it's always a weird day and a weird feeling for everybody, when something like that happens, something big like that, a change is made. As a player, you take a lot of responsibility in what happens when your coach gets fired. It should be, and it has to be a wake-up call for us that we need to start playing better and we need to start being a better hockey team.
Q. surprised it came to this?
A. you never expect it, it's always a shock and a surprise when it happens. I don't think any player in there was anticipating this happening right now. But it's been tough for a while now, and I think that, in the back of peoples' minds, I guess it's human nature that you think something's going to change. And today it did.
Q. you've been through this before.
A. too many times.
Q. how can it help?
A. I've seen it go both ways. I think for us, I would expect us to have a lot of energy in the next game, play a lot harder, compete hard. At the same time, I think we all have to understand we're not going to go out and start playing like the 1972 Soviet Union; drop passes everywhere, tic-tac-toe plays, that's a thing you can't get caught up in. We have a lot of work to do to regain some confidence offensively. And it's not just going to flip a switch and be there. We have to work.
Q. had coach's message stopped getting through?
A. You know, what happens in there, that's between us. I'm not going to sit here and say people stopped listening to Mike. Or anything. There was just, for whatever reason, it just … can't sit here and say it was working. Because I feel we hven't won a game in two months. We weren't playing well. And that was it.
Q. this year's slump more mystifying?
A. I don't know. it's hard. This shouldn't happen every year. we talk about it like, here we go again. On our annual fall. That's not OK. And we've all been searching, looking, trying to figure out why. What's the solution, what is the problem? And you know what, we need to concern ourselves with going out and playing hard and competing and winning a game and going from there. Our effort level, our intensity level has to go up. I think we can really start there. And everyone has to hp on board, and well get out of it.
MIKKO
Q. what can you do now as a leader
A. I think it's about playing for 60 minutes. And we haven't been able to do that. There's been some good periods, some good moments. But right after follows a bad one. This time of the year teams are getting better and you need to be able to do it for 60 minutes. There is a lot for that to happen. And then we build on confidence from there.
Q. mike took the fall, now it's on you?
A. for sure. I think that's the hockey business. It's usually goes on the coach. But we're all responsible for this. Every one of us in the room. We have to figure that out, find a way to win hockey games. You have to play good hockey and build the condidence as a group. What happened last year, two years ago, has nothing to do with this. We have to get ready for tomorrow, and that's all that matters right now.
