Photo Credit: Danny Wild-USA Today Sports

Photo Credit: Danny Wild-USA Today Sports

“It’s a dangerous way to live”, Army West Point Head Coach Brian Riley was honest about his team’s recent streak of losing Fridays and winning Saturday games each weekend

With that said , his team won 5-1 and he has this to say about Mercyhurst, “I was really impressed with the skill level of that team.”

He spoke to the response his team had after last night and what the coaches said.

“We challenged our guys to have a good response, we wanted to have a good start and try to put ourselves in a position where we weren’t chasing the game.We were grateful that we had an opportunity to come back out and play better , which we did.”

He talked about the Friday loss a bit and was honest. He said “ therewas enough blame to go around for everybody ( on Friday) we all looked in the mirror last night and knew we had to better today to give ourselves a chance.” He talked about a change to get quality looks, “tonight we did a better job getting around the goalie and playing with pace.”

On Justin Evenson playing, “it’s always tough to come in and stop the bleeding last night which he did.” 10 days ago him and Riley chatted about things and Evenson told Riley that he’d be ready when his time comes and he was. He said “This kind of helped serve as a reminder to the rest of the team that we have a trio of three goalies who come and practice hard every day and it’s kind of a next man up mentality. Our guys support each other, if Evenson got his number called he’d be ready and he was.”

Riley and his staff will take some time to figure out what the next move should be.

“This is their team and at this stage of the year I don’t think the players need or want to be listening to the coaches. They made sure that their teammates were ready to compete.”

On Hunter McCoy “ last night I thought he played well, we gave him a regular shift, (on the Konin goal) he used his tools” and scored.

For tonight “ it was a game that I never felt was over.” That changed when they got their fifth goal.

He then talked about Eric Butte and what he brings “because of his energy and passion for the game, our practices during his four years have been good. Butte is a great leader,he doesn’t have to say a lot, he leads by example. He’s a heck of a hockey player and a great young man.”

Heading into next week, Riley also mentioned the skill level of AIC as the biggest challenge his team has to face. “We are going to have to be really really good when we don’t have the puck, if we aren’t they will make you pay.”

“If you think you’re just going to show up, and flip a switch with playing AIC, it’s not going to happen.”

Mercyhurst

Head Coach Rick Gotkin had the following to say. “We knew Army was going to come out real strong and they did. The game kind of played out how we thought. We easily could have come out of that first period at 3-2 or 2-2.Army is a really good team and it’s a tough place to play. We’ve played the last two weekends on the road and we’re 2-2 and we’ll build off that. Our guys worked hard right until the end. When you score one goal it’s hard to win. We had some great looks and some open nets.”