Fighting words!

Kevin McLelland on the Texas Brahmas and the NYTEX Sports Centre

The Colorado Eagles Coach's Show on 107.9FM (The Bear) was a good listen on Monday night as Kevin McLelland spoke about the series against Mississippi and making it to the upcoming Ray Miron President's Cup Championship series in his first year as the Eagle's head coach. He also had some interesting things to say about the Texas Brahmas and the NYTEX Sports Centre.

I transcribed that part of the show for you to read.

Q: You’d mentioned earlier you’ve had a chance to start looking at the bios, the lineups, I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to look at any of the film yet of the Texas Brahmas. A very good team; a team that’s been consistently good all season long.

A: Yeah, they’ve got a lot of talent. They’ve got two lines that can score at any time. You know, Brett Jaeger, he’s a heck of a goaltender. I saw enough of him last year in that mini-series (with Mississippi ) there where we lost to him two games to one. He had a .975 save percentage in that series and I’ll tell you what, we’ve got to get on him early and make sure that any rebounds we get because he’s down a lot. But eh, they’ve got a good hockey club; they’ve got that little rink there that is pretty good home ice advantage for them. It’s a tough barn to play in. It’s cold, it’s a little bit nasty but it’s tough to play in. They’re a good hockey club, obviously. We went in there; we lost 4-1 earlier in the year…

Q: It went pretty good though…

A: Yeah, we outshot them 48-25, something like that. You know we did enough and I watched part of that game this morning and we had all kinds of opportunities. You know, they got a few power plays in a row there to get on the board with the first goal. We’re going to have to be disciplined against this hockey club because they’re actually a little bunch of rats that run around out there, pretending that they’re going to stick their nose in there. I talked to Paul Gillis this morning and you know, got some information off him.

Q: You hear that up and down the league about how difficult a building it is to go in and play. It’s a smaller building as you mentioned. If you put the Budweiser Event Center and the Ford Center at one end of the spectrum and Amarillo , let’s say, at the other end, this place is neighbors with Amarillo . Why is it a tough building to go in for visitors to walk away with a victory?

A: It’s just small, it’s real small confines in there and like I said, it’s cold; the lighting’s not the greatest. The boards are all wobbly and half of them stick out half-way and pucks are bouncing off and the posts, they don’t even have pegs in them, you know, anytime that you get into a little bit of an onslaught, just tell the goaltender to nudge the thing off, because the net comes flying right off. So, it’s a lot of things – I don’t want to be critical. It is what it is. That’s the type of building they have…that has nothing to do with it, they’re a good hockey club.

Q: The puck bounce all over the place, I asked Hartsy if you were going to practice with tennis balls or racquet balls, just to kind of get used to it. Basically, anything goes in there and it’s funny how, for a team like the Eagles, you’re a good puck-moving team and when you get in there, you guys make some nice plays offensively and it’s so small in there, it clogs up very easily and the pucks all over the place so it’s hard to control it.

A: Yeah, it’s small. Again, for a team like us with speed and skill, it’s not the greatest environment. You’ve just got to make the adjustments. I mean, you’ve got to make sure you get pucks deep – instead of making that third pass, make sure after the second pass you put it to the net so those things don’t happen. So, there’s always ways around their rink and you know, we haven’t used excuses here all year and we’re not about to use them now. We’ll have to change our game plan, obviously, from playing in the Budweiser Events Center and then going into Texas .

Q: You brought up Brett Jaeger and if you look at Kevin Beech, who you faced in this last round, six-foot-three, a big netminder. Brett Jaeger is really the opposite. A very small guy but really athletic. When you look at attacking a bigger netminder versus a smaller netminder, what’s the difference there…I know you want to get the bigger netminder moving a little bit, how about some of the smaller guys?

A: Well I think that bigger guys have bigger pads and gloves so they fit them (laughing). You just work with what works best. The book on Jaeger is that he gives up rebounds…he’s a smaller guy, there’s going to be a lot of room over the top of his shoulders and stuff like that. But he’s like a brick wall, so you’ve got to make sure that when you have opportunities against this guy, you bury him. That’s where we made the mistake last year (with Mississippi ). We thought we had a couple of tap ins and all of a sudden, he’d come across like Superman and stop us. You know, when you get that opportunity, don’t non-chalant the puck in the net, put it right through the back of the net.

Q: Do you think there will have to be a physical tone set with this team early on? The Mississippi squad, obviously, they get down in that series three games to none and they start taking some liberties on guys. It seemed to change the series, at least in their barn and they were running around a lot more, except for when they came back to Colorado in Game Six and were minding their P’s and Q’s a little bit better…

A: Yeah, I think at the end of that Game Five there, we made a statement ourselves. Tresierra went out and fought Smyth and Beatty got in Stoddard’s kitchen a little bit and he was very quiet here, so I think we made our own statement at the end of that game. Getting back to this team here, they only have one physical guy, that Nathan Saunders. I don’t really know how gung-ho he is to go. They’ve got a lot of guys that run around and they’re going to pretend. Like I said, Paul Gillis gave me the book on them. They run around, look like they’re going to actually drop their gloves and then get out of there and try and suck us in, so that’s the thing that we’re going to have to be, is real disciplined. We can’t be giving them extra whacks and slashes and then have them going on the power play because they’ve got too much skill, so we’re going to have to be a disciplined hockey group. If some of the physicality happens, we’ve got the guys that will look after it so guys won’t take liberties on our hockey club.

Q: If you look at Texas , Jason Deitch, he’s the leading scorer in the playoffs right now with 16 points. He played up with Houston earlier this year…he’s much smaller in stature. When you played him last time, I thought the Eagles did a really good job against him. They seem to be physical early on and he was pretty quiet, but he’s one of those guys on the squad that can make things happen in a hurry.

A: He was running around a little bit at the beginning of the game there. He’s a guy that. I was reading that their goaltender got hit and he went and got an aggressor on a guy, so he’s a guy that, he’s going to be a physical guy but the guys doesn’t skate well but he’s got all kinds of puck sense and great skill, so we’ve got to watch him, but he’s going to go and run out on a guy like Schneekloth or something like that and if a guy like Beatty comes in, he’s going to high tail it the other way. You’ve got to be real careful in those situations.

After a few questions that were unrelated to the Brahmas, McClelland spoke generally about the series.

A: It’s obviously going to be a tough series and we don’t want to have a let down. We’re going to make sure that doesn’t happen. Tomorrow as a group, we’ll talk about it, prepare ourselves and get ready to come out strong because these series can be over in a real hurry, so we want to make sure we protect the home ice, especially going down there for three.

Photo Credit: Robert Keith