Eagles in search of ACHA national championship this week in San Jose
By PAUL DELANEY
Staff Reporter
If the opponents the Eastern Washington University's men's hockey team faces in this week's American Collegiate Hockey Association Division II championships in San Jose, Calif. need a scouting report, it's pretty simple.
“Make sure you bring you A-game because we're coming after you,” head coach Gary Braun said Monday from the team hotel in California.
As he's said before, there is no game planning or scouting the opponents. “We play 35 games a year and you can't adjust to other people,” Braun said. “We play the way we play; we're going to be physical and pound people,” he said.
If other teams want to adjust, “that's great,” Braun said. “We're not going to make those kind of adjustments.”
Pool play began this past Tuesday, March 15 and runs through Thursday, March 17 with the Eagles playing once each day. Eastern, 24-6-1 and the No.1 seed in Pool C, faced the University of New Hampshire in the opener on Tuesday at 2 p.m. They followed that with a match-up against Central Michigan University Wednesday and concluded pool play against Miami of Ohio today, March 17.
The Eagles hope to call San Jose's Shark's Ice rink their home all week in anticipation of a potential berth in Saturday's championship of the 16-team tournament that brings together the ACHA's top teams. This is the third automatic berth in EWU's ACHA history, with the other two coming in 2006-07 and 2007-08. They made it as far as the semi finals in 2007, losing to Davenport out of Michigan.
To prepare for the tournament, “We've played three kind of exhibition inter-squad games prior to coming here,” Braun said. “Tuesday will be the proof in the pudding.”
Braun, a former professional hockey defenseman, likes to joke that his simple game plan could be the by product of him playing in the days before helmets were mandatory equipment. “It's cliché but there's no seven-game series, no five-game series to make adjustments,” Braun said. “In this kind of a situation it's got to be one shift, one game at a time.”
The path to the ACHA title is not all that much different than the one Braun took 20 years ago as an assistant coach of the Spokane Chiefs. That team went undefeated in four straight games to win one of hockey's most coveted championship trophies, the 1991 Memorial Cup.
With that process in mind, Braun's broken down the championship quest into simple steps. “Basically it's three periods, and then you gotta do it again, and again; you do it five times the right way you're hoisting the flag,” Braun explained.
Throughout the years Braun's been coaching – 35 years after getting his start in the Alberta Junior League in 1976 – you develop a style of play you excel at, he explained.
“(We're) kind of the Green Bay Packers, if you can stop us, good for you,” Braun said. “But if you can't, look out, here we come.”
Should the Eagles win their pool they would advance to the national semi final at 5 p.m. on March 18 and a win in that game would get them into the championship on Saturday, March 19.
Broadcasts of Eastern games are available at http://www.fasthockey.com.
Paul Delaney can be reached at pdelaney@cheneyfreepress.com.
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