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On Aspire with Emigread, we talk about mindset and vision and the work that actually moves the needle.
Listen to Aspire with Emigread available where you get your podcasts.
He has defended really well, he's moved the puck well, his first pass has been good.
Seldom gets beat on the rush, but his puck decisions are real good and his defending has been real good.
So, I'm not afraid to put him in any situation right now.
Have you seen his confidence grow since you got called up in October?
Well, I think I saw it on the little curl and drag goalie scored where I did just think you showed great composure.
The guy didn't have a stick and he hung onto that extra second.
It really, it looked like he's been training with Thompson. That's what it looked like.
Josh Norris, you know, he scores two goals in the first period, but he also more notable play at least to me was that he raised back and broke up a play.
What does that kind of show you just how engaged he is and how?
Well, I've talked to the team, the tracking is an indicator of how bad we want to win.
And when you're coming back like that, like he did, might be a video clip that's the whole team gets to see.
It's an indication of how hard you want to be to play against.
Because it doesn't matter, even if you're a little bit tired, you've got enough in you to track back and help break stuff up.
Everybody does.
And I think at different times, you've seen unbelievable tracks from different guys on the team, almost everybody.
I would rather show stuff like that than show goals going in the net.
You've got 22 games left. There's a lot of work left to do here.
But it's almost hard to believe.
And where you were in October, November, to where this team is now.
And teams don't generally transform themselves like that during a season without a major infusion of different guys.
That's amazing.
I put a lot of thought into where you're going with that.
We dealt with a lot of adversity from looking at starting the year.
I'll just share a little bit of my thoughts from, you know, we were looking at Norris and Collique being our one and two centermen,
which didn't happen right off the bat.
We had to move a lot of pieces around.
We had Dalline that was dealing with what he went through.
We had our starting goalie who was dealing with the couple injuries for those first couple months that was in and out.
You know, so we had probably four or five pieces that we were counting on that that weren't in there.
And I said that, you know, in a stretcher, we started to get healthy.
And Norris came back to the lineup.
It was kind of the turning point for our team where we started to really be a consistent team from night after night.
You're not consistent unless you get great goal training, which we were getting in our special teams that had been, you know, been good.
Our part of penalty killing had been really good.
And knew that if we managed to pop a little bit better, which we were getting better at, we could go on a run and we've gone on a run.
But we've taken this approach that that game we just played is over and we've got to just continue to try to get better.
Like even the focus today in the meeting before we got on the ice was we've got to improve these couple areas.
We want to continue to get better.
So there was a lot of things that, you know, you don't want to use excuses early on and we just kept dealing with a game by game.
And, you know, I think when we got healthier, we finally got better as a team.
Are any of your four long-term guys closer closer?
Well, they're getting closer.
Greenways back with us after going through some treatment away from us here.
Timins is progressing. I probably had his best day.
Collique will undergo another test. I believe it's tomorrow at whether he'll be cleared to rejoin us and he's been skating.
Who else am I missing? Dan Forth has been skating too.
Just kind of on and off, you know, still with dealing with some kind of issues.
You mentioned trying to improve in a couple different areas, but I'm just curious.
We're in the March now, and you guys are in a really good position.
What do you see as the biggest difference between this year's team and years past?
I think, you know, in tight games, we're comfortable staying in a tight game and being able to win a game three, two, or, you know, going to a game tied in a second, second, third period.
And being able to, you know, just score that key goal, a key time, and end up winning a game that we haven't made the big agree just some mistakes.
You know, the other allow the other team to win a hockey game.
I think our composure under under dress has been a lot better at the Josh.
I mean, it's been with the team almost a year to the day now, and he's been through a lot, but I mean, he's, you know, a year later, he's happy.
He's, you know, he's healthy. He's productive. What have you learned about him over his past 12 months, I guess?
I think perseverance, first of all, because it hasn't been easy.
You know, I think when you're dealing with what he's dealt with, he's probably thinking, you know, one's this going to end.
But he's come back and he's got himself in a good place. He's played well. I mean, last game was, you know, an indication of what we think we can get out of him.
And so, you know, for him to put all the work in to be ready to go again, you got to give him a lot of credit.
I mentioned all that early season adversity, and there was a lot of it last year too, where you thought I think at one point you said it was one of your toughest solves as a coach.
How much have you enjoyed like coaching this group and just seeing everything kind of sink in and turn around here?
Yeah. Well, I think it's the coaching becomes easier when they take over.
And they've kind of, I'll give them a lot of credit to give our, you know, the tux and Thompson's and the likes of those guys give them a lot of credit.
A lot of credit dolls can be, it can be part of that and buy room.
They're the example and they're the guys that are leading and they're the guys that you want everybody to follow.
And that starts first off ice with, you know, how receptive you are in meetings, how much work you're going to put in the gym.
You know, I think the, the area that is really grown with our team is just how much work we do off ice from even training after games that, you know, a lot of you don't see.
That is really increased and I think all those things of, you know, irregardless of where I stand, those things are, are things that you want your best players to be.
The guys that if a younger guy steps up and goes up, whole man, do these guys, do these guys work hard here? Do they do a, do they do a lot of work?
And I think our guys have taken over, they've, that doesn't, that doesn't come in for me all the time now.
And so, might have set us all, but they're solving it on a daily basis by being good pros.
And how much are you enjoying just working on those fine-tuning aspects like you're working on today as opposed to big picture things?
Yeah, I like the fine-tuning benefit for sure.
Maybe just one question for clarification on Yuri Kulik.
The test to determine if you'll be clear is that to skate, to practice, to resume playing.
You know, resume a higher level of fitness. I'll just say, I don't know what that level will be.
But, you know, whether it involves contact or, but we'll find out what that means.
The doctors will make that decision.
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