When you lose a key figure in your machinery, you obviously have to have some adaptation. Just think how the Pittsburgh Steelers would’ve been if they would’ve lost their quarterback going into the Super Bowl;...

That’s the first thing that kind of jumps off the page at you, what kind of guy he is. As we came to discover, he’s just a tremendous hard worker. He’s got a great mental...

The way we played didn’t give them a chance to get any life.

When you talk about big players you talk about Brian Elliott.

For those of you who don’t know Ross Carlson, he makes his best plays when he’s spinning like a top or he’s laying on his back or he’s on his knees. I like to see...

If you take a look at longevity, Craig passed that test. Craig’s strength as a college coach was to get kids to buy into his vision, and he worked that strength. He got a lot...

I think destiny is preparation meeting opportunity, but there’s an X-factor that’s uncontrollable, and maybe that X-factor was being here in Wisconsin. But we worked hard. We prepared ourselves for this opportunity.

We know they can beat us. Maybe that will put a little fear in our hearts.

This is the exciting part of the year. Now it’s coming down to the wire.

That’s a college hockey game that everybody in the building will be talking about for a long time.

Robbie has had disappointment in his life before and he’s always bounced back.

I just think they didn’t handle the riddle of having a team come back on them.

One thing we wanted to focus on was the heart. That’s the base of our pyramid, so it was probably the most rewarding thing because we can now build on that.

It’s like anything, you saturate the market. But we’re still in that early stage of being one of the first three, and I think that’s pretty neat.

Joe has picked up right where he left off last season. There has been no sophomore slump or slide of any kind. I think part of the reason is that Joe has great internal motivation.

That’s a big factor, the recruiting factor and being able to state that we have the highest average attendance and what a great building it is to play in. The other thing that it does...

Three of them (in the second period) were Grade-A scoring chances.

I’m a good player and I’m going to show you once again.

He’s not going to give you fantastic offensive flair, but he’s never going to let you down defensively.

Being the head recruiter, he knows the battles that we’re up against. I’m just grateful that he’s staying with it. He’s got some other things in mind because he knows when we bring (recruits) here,...

He’s like a surrogate grandfather. He represents a reference you can always go back to.

Our team played with great balance tonight. If each line can go out there and keep the tempo at a high level, it makes it very difficult for the other team to play against that.

I can tell you this explicitly, that nobody was looking at this as just a third-place game. There was a lot of pride on the line.

We definitely saw glimpses of the Brian that we knew before. I don’t think he had a bunch of Grade A scoring chances against, but when he had to see the puck and control it,...

Sometimes he does get pulled down, but the fact is, he does have that reputation.

I think most guys, when they see a problem, they want to fix it. Sometimes less is more, and that’s a hard concept for all of us to understand at times.

You could use the analogy that tonight was what the doctor ordered. The outcome, the game itself, was like a B-12 shot. We’re feeling better.

(Hook is) a really good player and just took the game over in the fourth quarter. She has my full respect.

We thought we saw something where we could draw them up, get it low and take what was given.

They know the kind of raucous atmosphere they’re in for. They’ve faced it all year, so I don’t think there’s much preparation we need to do with them.

(Elliott) demonstrated tonight how he got those numbers early in the season. It was nice to see that for him.

I can’t answer that. I know within our league that reputation is there.

We were playing 1-on-4 hockey. One guy would have the puck and everybody else would watch him instead of 4-on-1 with everybody working for the guy with the puck.

That’s going to be one of the things we talk about. Who’s going to turn up the volume?

Whenever you talk about the game of hockey and if your team is playing well or if your team is struggling, you always start with the person that’s playing between the pipes.

It was my contention that if we had another day or two to rest and recover we would have been better prepared. It’s a little similar right now. While those other teams are having to...

The turning point was Brian Elliott. He was outstanding.

If he’s ready, then we’d look at it. But we’re not going to go in there and jam it down his throat.

Our numbers have been very good recently.

We were riding a really good wave. But when you’ve been around this game long enough, you know you’re going to hit some storms.

I’m kind of surprised at the timing of it. I thought if this was going to happen, it would’ve been earlier this summer.

He represents that reference that you can always turn to and pull off the shelf and ask questions.

I guess we can take some credit with how well they’re playing right now.

North Dakota stayed with it and got themselves back in the game. It’s at that point, I don’t think we responded very well.

I don’t think that would be very prudent on our part.

We’ve tried to apply that lesson all year. It’s a very profound game for these young men because we’ve talked about it all year and we’ve talked about it as a group. It’s the application...

The whole weekend was an opportunity of growth for us as a team. We took that opportunity by winning two games here at home against a quality team. We talked about before the game that...

He just has to do his part, let his teammates do their part and we should come out all right.

You keep your routine. You talk about the things you’ve talked about all year and you go out and play. I think sometimes when you try to hype it and you get excited and you’re...

The guys talked about how Michigan came out and dictated. That’s one thing this group wanted to do, to implement that part of the game, and they did a pretty fine job.