March 21, 2008

Final Stats

Miami Quotes

Head Coach Enrico Blasi:

"Well I just thought the guys did a great job all night long. For the most part we stuck to the game plan and it was an unfortunate goal that they got that "Z [Zatkoff]" will say that he would probably want back. Scoring with two seconds left is a lucky bounce and it gave us a lot of momentum going into overtime. We were definitely opportunistic in our chances.

On the emotion in the last six minutes:

"Going back to Zatkoff, I thought he played a great game. He was so calm and moving in the net. He made a lot of the tough saves look easy. When he is on that is the way he looks. The team wants to bail him out because he has been there all year. As far as my emotions are concerned, they were up and down because there is only so much you can do as a coach. You have to make sure the next line is up and hope that the right guys are out there."

Defensemen Alec Martinez

On the play before the goal:

"It was a broken play on the left half wall. The puck bounced towards me and I just fired it as hard as I could."

On what Notre Dame did well:

"I think that one of the strongest things that Notre Dame has is the confidence in their system. They are a pretty well oiled machine. I think Coach Jeff Jackson does a good job at that. Their biggest asset is that everyone does their job every night. When you tend to do that you are very successful."

On the game winning goal

"I got the shot off and it was hard to follow because of the traffic in front of the net. I didn't know it went in until the mesh rippled a little bit and then the puck dropped. It just waited and waited for the puck to drop."

On being mobbed by his teammates:

"It is kind of scary to be on the bottom of the pile with all the guys jumping on me. It is a good feeling though."

On playing at "The Joe"

"He [Zatkoff] and I grew up pretty close to each other. It is nice to come home like this and play in this arena. There is so much history and I grew up watching the Detroit Red Wings. It is a really good feeling to come here and win this game."

Goalie Jeff Zatkoff

On Mark Van Guilder's disallowed goal:

"To tell you the truth it was an unbelievable shot. I stayed up on it and it still went over my shoulder. I wasn't sure but when I saw the replay it looked like it hit the post."

On the play of Jordan Pearce:

I thought that Pearce played really well. He kept him in the game. I thought we controlled the game in the first and the majority of the second. He was able to keep him in it and build momentum and took the lead in the third."

On his team bailing him out:

"I mean they have been there time and time again this whole year. I was just thinking that I needed to keep it a one goal game and they would come through. They did with two seconds left."

On playing at "The Joe":

"It is always exciting coming home. I grew up 20 minutes east of here and I had a lot of family at the game. Anytime you get to play at the Joe Louis Arena, it is what you dream about as a little kid, it's a dream come true."

Notre Dame Semifinal Quotes (3/21/08)

Notre Dame Head Coach Jeff Jackson

On the game overall:

"It was difficult. Any time you lose a game like that it's pretty devastating. The kids are handling it pretty tough and I would expect them to. I couldn't ask anything more from their effort."

On the play of junior goaltender Jordan Pearce:

"People still don't want to believe that he is the type of goaltender that I've been talking about for the last several months. I think he's elevated his game, he's gotten better as the season has progressed. He wanted to do well here, and the thing is that he's learned to be able to handle the mental aspect of it a lot sooner than I expected him to just because, basically, he's never been through it before."

Notre Dame Senior Center Mark Van Guilder

On tomorrow's consolation game:

"Well, we've got to get over (the loss). We can't just sit around and pout about it. (There were) a few tough bounces, but that's not going to change the game tomorrow. We just have to get over it."

On what has changed since the other last-minute losses this season to U-M and MSU:

"First of all, we're really sitting on the bubble (for the NCAA Tournament), our season is going to continue or it's going to be over. It's do or die now. We've got a game tomorrow."

On the disallowed ND goal with six minutes left in regulation:

"I didn't see it initially. Obviously we thought it was in and they thought it wasn't, but that's how it goes. You can't really think about it too much, it'll drive you crazy."

Notre Dame Senior Right Wing Evan Rankin

On the overall play of the team:

"I think we did a good job of executing our system. We had a lot of tough breaks, but we've got to get up tomorrow and be ready to play."