Steve Pompeii (Yeti)
1. Nice win tonight over the colonials. What can you say about the team effort? We played good. It was a solid team effort from front to back. This team is just unreal. We can raise the level of play at any moment when needed. We just keep getting better and better each week. Any thing less than a championship will be a failure to our season. That’s the mindset we have this year. 2. A 6 to 3 lead got down to 6 to 5. Were you getting nervous at all? Not at all. 3. Cody and Brandon seem to be fitting in well. What's been your take on those 2 additions? Listen these guys are phenomenal. Each one of them has the ability to take over a game. I’m excited to be playing with these guys instead of against them. 4. What did you think made the difference in tonight's win? We just played as a team. Everyone knows what’s at the end of the road. And we’re not stoping till we get there 5. Any surprises you have observed within the league so far? No not really. It’s still early and a lot of hockey left to play.
Pat Hunter (Renegades)
1. Tough 7 to 5 loss tonight. What did you think went wrong in that 2nd period? Yeah tough loss no doubt. We are having some trouble putting a complete 45 minutes together, we have yet to do that. We let up, lost focus and against a team like that the puck usually ends up in the back of the net when a mistake is made. 2. Any positives you can take out of this game? A couple positives yes. I thought our goaltending was pretty solid despite allowing seven goals, defensive lapses were more of an issue. I thought Gus played really well, worked hard and was able to score a couple for us. He is a player we rely on to pick us up. 3. 3 losses to top teams. Are any of you discouraged? Yeah, anytime you lose 3 games to top teams it is discouraging but I think we all agree that we would rather go through our struggles now. Some growing pains were expected, we have a different roster. Lewy Lehman and Denny can score some goals so when we get them going I think we will find our stride. 4. Knights may be even stronger than last season. What was your impression of them after playing them tonight? Pretty simple with them yet hard to defend, they are fast. We played them in the finals last year and it was a hand full. We have some kinks to work out to get our season back on track, then we can worry about them. 5. What differences have you noticed within the league from last year to this year? It's no secret we won the finals last year, teams are ready to play us and have proven themselves. We are going to have to find our identity soon or we will find ourselves in a bad situation at the end of the season, but I'm not worried the guys have great attitudes, we will find our way.
Brian Anderson (Colonials)
1. The Colonials roster has changed quite a bit this year. What have been the pros and cons so far through 4 games? We are definitely faster than a season ago and have 3 guys capable of creating offensive zone time. Last season, we didn’t have that much speed or depth and that came back to hurt us in the playoffs. If a team wants to focus on shutting down one guy, we still have others capable of leading the way. Obviously, team chemistry takes some time to come together when new guys come on board and we haven’t seemed to figure out a disciplined style of hockey. We have given up almost 20 goals the last 2 weeks and no team in this league will win a championship giving up that many goals. Hopefully we can get it fixed between now and August or else we will be doing more spectating than playing come Mid August.
2. After getting within a goal, the Yeti pulled away in the last 5 minutes to win 10-5 against you guys Monday. What went wrong at the end? Cody really hurt us last night. I think he scored their 7th goal after we had momentum going in our favor. I think that goal deflated us a little. We had a 2 on 1 with a couple minutes to go but I shot one a little wide on a nice pass that could have gotten us within a goal. Once we ran low of time, we had to take chances and they found themselves with easy opportunities at the other end.
3. Your team fell behind early but managed to crawl back into it in the early third. Did you change your style to get back into the game? I thought we played a real good 2nd period and we played well most of the 3rd period. They had 5 goals in the first period but we limited them to 1 in the 2nd and they were still stuck at 6 goals with 5 minutes to go. I thought we had momentum on our side at that point. We seemed to be in much better defensive positions than we were early in the first period and we didn’t seem to be letting guys get behind us, but as I said above, Cody scored that 7th goal and it seemed to take away all the good things we did in that 2nd and 3rd period. Adam made some big saves as well that preserved their lead as the game went on.
4. You’ve had a strong statistical start to the season. Have you been happy with your game through 4 games? Definately. I was optimistic that more creative offensive play makers would open things up for me. It definitely has but I missed a good chance to get our team within a goal last night in the 3rd period. I wish I had that one to do over, but all in all, I am happy to be contributing offensively. Defensively, myself and the rest of us have a lot of work to do if we are going to beat these better teams.
5. This is proving to be a very competitive start to the 2019 season. Are you proud of where the league has come in your tenure as president? I was just telling Fred last night that this is the 5th year as being the president of the league. When Tim Herman gave it up, I got in one of those moods to do something crazy, so I volunteered to give it a try. I had a feeling there weren't many guys standing in line for it. Unfortunately, not only did Tim Herman give up the presidency, but he also gave up playing hockey for a while. A lot of people seemed to follow him. We only had 6 teams the first year I took over and only 3 of them had a realistic chance of winning a championship. I remember Joe didn’t play that first year and neither did Kevin. At the end of that first season, I made up my mind that we needed to try playing one night a week instead of 2 to try to get some more guys to come back. Considering we play year round now, I think once a week works out perfectly. I also wanted to try to get the youth involved so we had some junior hockey games that first year. We have gotten a lot of guys from that since then and I also got in touch with Joe Spencer about his league in Brockway. It’s great that a lot of our guys have gone there and a lot of their guys have joined up with us. They have all added so much to our league. Then he brought a couple stars over from Indiana in Mike Lehman and Pat Hunter. I hope those two continue to play for a long time. I knew reffing wasn't my strength when Tim Herman handed the presidency over to me, but luckily, Dave Glass very willingly stepped in a few years ago to try to help out. Not having any connections with the league or its history, and him having experience with reffing and umpiring, as well as a good sports background, I thought he may be just the guy we needed to have an important role within the league operations. He puts a lot of hard work into what he does no matter what it is, and he has proven that with our reffing. Other guys have stepped up as well, whether its reffing, helping keep stats, website, recruiting new players, etc. From what I observe, a lot of people are having fun and that's what the league should be. Because of everyone's help, being the president of the league is a lot easier now than it was 5 years ago. Even better, the league is a lot more competitive than it was before.
Jerred Amick (Knights)
1. 7 to 5 win tonight over the renegades. What can you say about the team effort in the win? Given that we are down two men, Tate and Luke, I think we did a good job of skating with them especially since they had many subs. Despite having less subs, I think we were able to dictate and control the speed of the game and make the renegades play our game. 2. What does a win like this do for team confidence? While a win is always a boost to team confidence but we all understand that this is just an regular season win, and we fully expect the renegades to be a tough contender for the Taylor cup. Put this win behind us and prepare for the next game. 3. 2nd period went well for you. What do you think you guys did well that helped you gain seperation? We continued to play our normal fast style of play. It’s difficult for teams to sustain that type of pressure and speed, that eventually things should turn in our way. It wasn’t until half way through the third period that we started slowing down and getting tired and that’s exactly when the renegades started their late surge 4. You like with how you are fitting in with these guys? I’m not putting up lots of points for the Knights but I’m confident that I am making much positive contributions as well as being an offensive deterrent. It’s simply too hard for most teams to cover the Knights. I’ve really been working on speeding up my game and doing everything more quickly to fit the fast style of the Knights. 5. Mayhem next week. What kind of game are you expecting from them? As always, you can’t practice to your competition so we will be preparing for them just like any other team. They have some fast guys that can slip through and we have to make sure we aren’t caught staring at their sleek threads. Best new jersey design this year!