18 Quotes by Gary Defina

Nobody expected us to be here from the beginning of the season. We had a heck of a run at the end of the season.

He had never really played high school hockey, and then he was our No. 1 guy, so he was a little rattled, and I'm sure a little nervous. But he's gotten stronger and stronger.

His skills are top shelf. He's a gifted player. He's got that God-given talent that you can't teach. This year, he took on more of a leadership role. He knew that was expected of him. Obviously, he had his ups and downs, but he's going to learn from what happened to him this year and be in a better position next year.

He usually swallows his rebounds or hands it off to the defense. The other night (against Rampart) he gave up a goal with 50 seconds left in the game, and it went into overtime. In the first shift of overtime, he made a great save, and we went back down and scored.

That's the way kids will think when you are down like that. You try to tell them to take it one shift at a time, one goal at time, but, you know, we didn't get it done.

We played terribly that weekend. We've always had a solid rivalry with them. The kids have always had a good rivalry with them. We're going to come out to play, for sure. They've played well. They crushed Liberty (Friday), 7-1. The kids know they have to play better than today.

We were a little flat tonight. We came out all right in the first, got a couple of goals right off the bat. We didn't play our best game and we know it. They were saying at the end of the first period, even though they had a 3-0 lead, that they didn't play very well. It was good enough against a bad team and we'll take the win.

We're all excited to be back as coaches to work with this group. We know we have some real good Bantams coming up, so the tryouts are going to be super competitive. The whole group comes back and this is going to be that much more of a strong team.

We had some talks about that this week, about controlling his emotions, and focusing them toward the opponent, and not the refs. He did a nice job of that tonight.