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October 1, 2003

WCHA pre-season conference call

Jim Dahl

A few of the SiouxSports.com staff were able to attend the WCHA pre-season teleconference and take some notes of those discussions.

Here is a sneak preview of our notes on the UND portion of the call. We're continuing to pull together our notes on the rest of call and will publish them in an article shortly on the SiouxSports.com UND Hockey pages.

They were liberally transcribed and interpreted, may be incomplete, and should definitely NOT be construed as direct quotes; further, it's quite likely that some of the original meaning in some statements may have been inadvertantly changed.

Dean Blais' opening comments:

The Wild are playing St. Louis at Ralph Engelstad Arena tonight. Some familiar faces to look for are Travis Roche & Brad Bomardier on the Wild; Jeff Panzer, Murray Baron, and Ryan Johnson with St. Louis.

The team worked hard over the summer and got themselves in good condition. They look hungry and can hopefully be better in net than last year. Parise and Ziegleman come from the USHL as freshmen netminders. Jake Brandt is the lead returner in net, but got himself in some trouble over the summer and can hopefully get things straightened out.

Murray, Parise, and Bochenski will be the starting line for the Sioux.

The UND defense looks solid; Schneider will get a lot of ice time, as will Matt Jones, Matt Greene, and Fuhrer. Smaby will play regularly; at 6'4", he looks very comfortable on the ice so should easily make the regular roster.

Some of the older guys came in injured so might not yet have established the leadership roles they need. The team is going to wait a few weeks to elect a captain because the young guys might not know the old guys so well yet.

Q&A Session:

Q: Can you talk about your frustation with goaltending last year?
A: I don't think goaltending cost us any games. However, goaltending didn't win us a lot of games like Goehring did. Jake Brandt had a good SV% and GA, but the league had a lot of good goaltenders who won the close games for their teams. 44% of league games were won by 1 goal.

Q: Will the Jake have to sit out any games?
A: Jake will have to sit out one game, but it's not yet decided which. Maybe the first game to establish early on that if you get in trouble, there will be consequences.

Q: The ratio of Jr/Sr - Fr/So seems a lot better this year than the last two. Are high expectations more realistic?
A: We didn't have a bad year last year, but when the fans see a WCHA competitor bring in back to back titles and 5 teams make the NCAA tournament, they know the league is tough. The bar is raised throughout the league so you have to be ready every game. You're not going to outcondition anyone in this league because everyone does it. Maybe our extra conditioning will give us an edge against a Hockey East team that got a later start, but not in this league

Q: Do you think this team could contend for the nation championship?
A: We're going to be bigger and more physical and have to kill off those penalties. I don't know if we're there yet with only 3 seniors; it seems the best power plays are those guys who can one-touch the passes. You also need leadership, which I don't know if we have; and chemistry, which you can't recruit.

Q: Tell us about Brady Murray and Matt Smaby
A: Brady was one of the top players at Salmon Arm. He's a bit like Zach, anticipates on the ice well, his father had a lot to do with the NHL and play at that level, and he knows what it takes to win. Brady has a chance to have an outstanding year.
Smaby is going to take a little time, try to make sure he's in the lineup, not make a lot of mistakes, learn the league, learn the speed. He has the ability but didn't know what it took to play in the league when hitting some of the conditioning like running the stairs. He got a taste of the intensity of our team at "Meet the Sioux" with 1000 kids looking for autographs, but will see what it's like in this league at the first game.

Q: Are freshmen more impacting today than previous eras?
A: Depends on the person -- not too many Parises and Vaneks come around. Lundbohm scored 2 his first year and 30 the next 2 years; Goren also scored 4 then 30 and 30. Freshman can play the game and be on the ice and not mess you up, but you never know if they're going to be able to be an offensive force.

Q: With Murray and Parise are together, how much can Bochenski score?
A: I don't want to pull numbers out of the sky, but the line could be as high as 80-100. Bochenski has 60 for two years, so who knows how well he could do. Some years you just don't get the goals and hit pipes.

Q: Did you put that line together because they'd be good, or for your own entertainment to watch from the bench?
A: They won't just be able to freely cycle the puck in this league.

Q: Will you take it easy on Sandelin?
A: We didn't beat Duluth last year!

Q: How will your large team mesh this year?
A: Our speed, strength, and size should mesh really well; we're bringing in guys like Porter, who was drafted, and Stafford, who was too young to be drafted. However, even those big guys are a little like deer in headlights seeing the intensity of the game at this level.