Jay Graham Quotations

We want to reclaim what we think is ours. Winning the (CHC) title is one of the things that we want to accomplish this year. ... We just want to continue to play our game and let everyone else try to catch up.

We want to show people that we're the team that everyone should be gunning for (in the Capital Hockey Conference). We want to keep distance between us and everyone else because we want to win the league. ... That's why the lapses are very concerning.

We always had a (player) within an arm's length of (Kirstein). We respect his game. We wanted to make sure that he didn't beat us.

I have a lot of respect for them for beating us the first time ... but we sent a message that we considered (the loss) to be a fluke.

Giving up two goals late in the first period was something we couldn't overcome. That was too much.

If we run into them in the tournament, I certainly would expect our guys to have a chip on their shoulders. There are some bitter feelings. ... We want to show people why we got that seed.

(Jerome) definitely played hard and wanted it more than we did. We gave up too many odd-man breaks and that's how they scored the winning goal. ... We also have to be better at finishing.

(Springboro goalie Ryan) McNutt did a great job. He kept them in it for as long as he could.

We feel for them. We know what it feels like to get this far and come up short of your goal.

We're ecstatic that we got there, but we're not satisfied with just getting there. We want to win. ... We want to represent Columbus well and bring Columbus hockey into the limelight.

We need to have a solid work ethic and come prepared to win hockey games. If we do that, I feel like we can make a run in the tournament. But everyone now must understand that we need to play with a sense of urgency.

We wanted to come out and set the tone early and hopefully carry that momentum the rest of the game.

We talked to the younger kids, and told them they needed to close the gap for the older guys. They did their job.

We lose five seniors and they were all impact players. Hopefully we can rebuild. We have the most underclassmen of all the teams here (at state). We feel that next year's team will be very competitive as well.

We certainly know a lot about them and they know a lot about us. It's nice to have an all-Columbus (district) final. That guarantees a Columbus team will get (to state). ... We've had success against them this year, but we know they have a good team. But we're more concerned about ourselves. Our focus is on what we need to do.

It was very important to come out fast and fill the net. We wanted to make sure we got the lead and put the pressure on them right away. We wanted to make sure they didn't get any momentum.

Offensively, I thought we had one of our better games. Scoring four goals against Padua is impressive. ... We were brilliant offensively, but I thought our play in the defensive zone was sub-par for our standards.

This is a very, very upsetting loss for us. It leaves us with an empty feeling.

That loss took away a lot of the swagger that we had coming into the new year.

They were playing in two tournaments over the Christmas break, so they had a split squad. I'd say they had about half of their varsity players and had some players from their j.v. team.

I am physically sick to my stomach. That's how bad we played.