In the second part in a two-part interview, UW men's hockey Head Coach Mike Eaves discusses the future of Badger hockey and his goals for his team and for himself.
What kind of system are you bringing here to the UW?
In a very general sense, our plan is, and this keeps getting pounded to death every time I talk about it, we want to play very, very hard.
Once we've got that established, then we want to learn to play smart. There's certain concepts in the game, that if you do these concepts you won't beat yourself and we want to be a team that doesn't beat ourself and that's a team that plays smart. If we can forecheck as a unit of five, if we can play defensive zone coverage as a unit of five, then we'll be awfully hard to beat.
What do you expect out of your players?
Well, I think that goes back to the things we talked about, the way we're going to play as a team. We want them to work hard first of all. Then, if they can work smart, not beat themselves, if they can learn new skills and then if they can learn to play with their teammates.
In turn, what can your players, and maybe even the Badger fans, expect out of you?
Hopefully what they will see is a team, when they come watch, that no matter the circumstances, the score, the time of the game, that we are working our fannies off.
What has the team's attitude, or outlook, been like so far this season?
As hard as we've pushed them and we've pushed them very hard, when we look into their eyes and we ask them for a little more or we go through some tough times, I still have a sense that they're with us. They're still believing in what we're trying to do. When we have something that happened the other night where we were behind late and we came back and we scored a goal to tie it. We were persistent in our efforts and we found a way to get another goal to win the game.
That sells itself, that sells everything we've been talking about. The way that we scored the goal, the way we prevented them from scoring was based on what we've been trying to do.
What is your ultimate goal for the season?
Our ultimate goal, and people kind of smile at us and think we're crazy when we say this, but we want to win the NCAA championship.
We will be realistic in terms of we know what we have to do, where we have to go in order to give ourselves a chance to get there and we will work on that process. But our ultimate goal is to get that championship.
Finally, a few of your NHL coaching stints have lasted three to four years. Can Badger fans hope to have you here for maybe a few years longer than that?
I sure hope so. I know my wife does. Coaching sometimes is a business about getting different experiences. It's about creating a resume of experiences that help you become a well-rounded coach.
