What is your coaching philosophy/strategy?

What it boils down to is teaching the players to make good decisions. There’s just so much happening on the ice; players can’t be prepared for every situation. The coaching staff has to trust the kids to do the little things, and to take what’s there. We don’t want the kids to try to be heroic on every shift.

How would you describe your coaching personality?
I’d like to think that I’m a players’ coach. I try to be as approachable as possible. I’m definitely not a hard-line kind of guy. I tend to be very laid-back. It’s important to me that the guys are having a good time.

What kind of things do you do to prepare for games?
We practice a couple times per week. Mostly it’s just building piece-by-piece. We focus on getting guys into the right habits, making good decisions all the time. Before the [championship,] we did have a meeting, where we talked about how we wanted to approach [Linganore star player Ethan] Klouka and we made sure everyone was on the same page, and mentally prepared.

What was it like having two girls on the team this year?
It’s funny. In 15 seasons, we’ve had at least one girl in probably around 12 of them. As long as they work hard, they’re just regular players to me. Obviously having two as good as Amy [Lipton] and Haley [Skarupa] are is a thrill. They go out there and they contribute. They are both good, smart, dedicated players. It was great to have Amy win a championship after missing last year’s run since she was so busy, and Haley won a championship with her brother on the team.

What were your expectations coming into this season?
I thought we should be very competitive. We lost a lot of guys who played a lot of minutes. For example, we lost every goal-scorer from the championship game last year. But at the same time, I saw that we still had Jon [Cohen] and Dylan [Skarupa]. [Chris] Hogan was coming back; [Josh] Bretner was coming back. So I was still pretty happy with the roster at the beginning of this season. We just had to understand that we had the target on our back. Every game, our opponents wanted to beat us a little bit since we were the defending champs. I think that actually helped us though. We were probably played tougher by Churchill and Whitman than Easton and Linganore because they were familiar with us. That helped us turn it on the last two games, which is when we really had to.

Who would you say it this year’s team MVP?
I really can’t choose just one guy. Jon probably scored most of the big goals, but how many of those were assisted by Dylan? There were games where Hogan was huge. In the semifinal, P.J [Hall] was out of this world. Everybody stepped up at one point or another. We were in a fortunate situation where we didn’t have to rely on just one guy.

What is your outlook for next year’s team?
The biggest question mark going into next season is whether or not we will have enough offense. Obviously, losing great possession players like Jon and Dylan is tough to replace. It’s going to be up to guys like Steven [Rubin] and P.J and Neofytos [Panagos] and to step it up. Alex Greenfest and Sam Weintraub too. We’re going to be competitive; we’re still going to win a lot of games. I’m just not sure we’re going to have that dynamic scoring ability that can stick it to another team. Our style might have to change a little bit; we might not be able to play that transition game as well as we have been. We’ve got two real good goalies coming back though, so we’ll be fine in net. Bretner, [Jonah] Guiton, [Ryan] Streger, [and Carl] Sperling is a solid defensive core.