Gary Defina Quotations

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.

There's one team that has separated themselves from the rest of the pack, and that's Cheyenne Mountain. But from the second seed to the 12th, all of those teams are very competitive and can beat anyone.

Defensively, we were running around a little bit. We spent a little too much time in our zone today. We got away from our game plan. We played down to their level. That's the best way to put it. Then again, it was good enough to win.

It's kind of the same as the beginning of the year. It's a young team with jitters at the beginning of the playoffs. They don't have a lot of experience. But it's good to get that one behind us.

It's huge. Like we said, we started off slow. We knew we were going to have some growing pains, but we're peaking at the right time. We're right where we want to be. We have some momentum and we're playing well.

It was a great hockey game. It was fun for us to watch. There were two evenly matched teams, and it could have gone either way.

They worked hard when they needed to. (Liberty) is obviously struggling. These guys did what it took to beat that team.

The kids know and they are focused. Every game is do or die. We've just got to play better every game.

In about half of our games, we've had bad first periods, but not tonight. We came out flying, and that's what we need to do from here on out.

He's the first one on the ice and the last one off every time we skate. He wants it so bad - he really wants to improve.