While the youthful Wisconsin men’s hockey team has unmistakable weakness to improve, head coach Mike Eaves is not lacking encouragement.
UW’s head coach maintained an upbeat tone in his weekly press conference Monday. Eaves, though he said he was pleased with the sweep over North Dakota, did not disguise his surprise over the fact that Wisconsin was able to win both games despite not playing as well as he thought it could have.
“It’s amazing in athletics how fickle [winning] can be,” Eaves said. “How you can play very, very well and not find a way to win, and that we don’t play as well as we would’ve projected we might’ve on Saturday, and yet we still find a way. … We just kept playing and had the attitude like things are going to be all right.”
Keeping their heads up even when things are not going as planned is something Eaves said he keeps attributing to what might be as simple as not knowing any better, combined with a drive to excel.
“I think it’s who these young men are, to a degree, but I also think it’s just being young and just keep playing, being na?ve,” Eaves said. “Because of their youth, they’re excited to get on the ice every time. But, also, because of the work they did this summer, and what Jim (Snider) has seen from in the weight room, they do work hard. They stay with it.”
Eaves said he also recognized the strong play of UW’s key freshmen, Joseph LaBate and Matt Paape. LaBate is tied for second on the team in points with six and two goals, and Paape has contributed three assists for the Badgers this season.
“I think that [LaBate] really wants to be good, and that’s where his assertiveness lies,” Eaves said. “I think, physically, he’s still kind of feeling his way around … but his mindset is that of being assertive, is pushing forward and getting better.
“Matt is one of those hockey players that has things you don’t teach. The puck finds him. He’s kind of got, like a football player, you say he has a nose for the football. He has a nose for the puck. He tries things offensively. And the points that he has right now … have been a result of him being around the puck.”
Perhaps the biggest concern at this point for the Badgers is the health of freshman defenseman Jake McCabe. Eaves did not go into much detail concerning the injury, said to be an upper body injury after game one against North Dakota, but Eaves did specify he was given a six-week recovery timetable for McCabe, though it could range anywhere between five and eight weeks.
The Badgers are beginning preparation for this Friday’s start to a series against Nebraska-Omaha. Wisconsin has limited experience, playing only seven games against Nebraska-Omaha, but UNO’s head coach, Dean Blais, spent 19 seasons coaching North Dakota earlier in his career, giving Eaves a sense of familiarity.
“The fact is that we found a way to win two games,” Eaves said. “The level of play which we had over the weekend was a step for us, but we’re still such a young team that we’ve got to [keep] still making these little steps to improve and play more consistently, the way we want to play, in order for us to be considered an upper echelon team, working our way to be a championship team.”
