University of Minnesota Athletics
Gophers Preview Wisconsin
12/2/2015 12:00:00 AM | Women's Hockey
Dec. 2, 2015
MINNEAPOLIS - Head coach Brad Frost and junior forward Dani Cameranesi preview this weekend's Gopher women's hockey series on the road at No. 1 Wisconsin (16-0-0, 10-0-0 WCHA). No. 3 Minnesota (15-1-0, 11-1-0 WCHA) and the Badgers kick off the border battle series at 7 p.m. CT Friday at LaBahn Arena in Madison, Wis.
On preparing for the Wisconsin series...
Brad Frost: They're our biggest rivals, obviously our players know a lot of their players, so there's a very big rivalry, a friendly rivalry, but at the same time, they want to beat us extremely bad and we want to beat them. We're one and two in our league and one and three in the country, so if this weekend doesn't get them fired up, I'm not sure what will.
Dani Cameranesi: It's a very exciting weekend. They always have a very good atmosphere. They get a lot of fans there, and obviously they don't like us very much. I think hearing them cheering against us and everything kind of gets us going, it's a really exciting atmosphere to be in.
On what makes the rivalry with Wisconsin so special...
Frost: Well I think the success mainly that both of our teams have had. They've won four national championships, we've won six. They're always a top team in the country. I mean, you look over the last probably eight/nine years, they've either been one, two or three; we've been one, two or three. We bring out the best in one another, and the games are always tight. Generally, we see each other later in the year as well in playoffs, and the national tournament, you know it's yet to be seen, but I wouldn't be surprised if that happened again.
On the significance of this weekend's series...
Cameranesi: I think it's a good test for us, and obviously we're coming near the end of the first half of the season. Just being able to put everything together and what we've learned over the season and kind of combine it all. We have one game after this against St. Cloud, but this is technically our last series, so it'll be a good test for us to see what we're made of.
On the power play...
Frost: I just think they're keeping it really simple. Both units are reading off one another extremely well. I mean we have five, they have four, and so we need to take advantage of that. The simpler they can keep it and get the puck to the paint appropriately, then we're going to generate a lot of things. But to be close to 50 percent at this time in the year is pretty incredible. We're going to need some power play goals this weekend to be successful, as well.
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