We opened our season Saturday in Chicago. With a season opener there are always some nerves. If you’re playing or coaching and you don’t get a little bit nervous or on edge, I don’t know if you should still be in the game. That’s part of the excitement, being able to go out and compete and compete hard against your opponent that night, that’s all a part of the game.

I thought the club’s performance Saturday night against Chicago was good. That’s a tough building to go into and play. It’s a skilled team they have in Chicago, so it was a very good test for us for the first game of the year. We came out and worked very hard. We’re still a work in progress, but it was a good first game. There are still a lot of things we have to improve on and work on, but it’s a good start to the season.

I thought Deks was very solid for us; he made big saves when he needed to. He tracked the puck very well. We had a lot of good exchanges, which made it easier on our defensemen to get the puck going in the other direction. I thought all of our defensemen played solid. There were a lot of good things, we generated a lot of shots and got a lot of them through. We had forty shots at net, and a lot of bodies going to the net. We got goals from guys that last year really didn’t score too much. That’s what we are really going to need to do this year; get goals from everybody. Everyone is going to have to contribute to the offense. MacKenzie, Santorelli and Grant all had hard working goals, taking pucks and bodies to the net. It was a good effort by everyone.

Having a lot of guys back this year is key, the systems have changed a little bit from last year and there are some new things that we’re doing. It’s nice having a good core group of guys that can help break in the system with the newer guys. It helps the guys that are here for the first time to see how we do things. The key is having that core group of guys, they come to work everyday and they know our philosophy, they come in and work hard on and off the ice, not just here or there, or when they want to. When it’s time to be on the ice, they compete hard and at the same time they enjoy doing it. They enjoy being around each other and competing for each other.

I played two seasons over in Europe and now there are a lot of players from Europe that play over here in North America. I’ve played and coached with European players for quite a while. In Saginaw, we’d have two European imports a year, so the more experiences you can draw from, the better you’re going to be as a coach. I take the positives and negatives from every place I’ve been as a player and coach, so hopefully those things will help me make things better here in Milwaukee.

I enjoyed my time in Europe, it was good. The people were out standing, the fans were very loud, noisy, and loyal. As a player you always like to be in a building like that. We played fewer games there, we maxed out at about fifty, so the schedule was a little lighter, we had more practice time. I had a little more time to see some things in Europe, so at that point in my career it was good.