Jack Parker On BU-Mack

Jackie had plenty of golden soundbites for the media in his conference call leading up to this weekend's playoff series at Agganis Arena.

(Find the crappy audio of the conference call here)

One of the questions that Parker was asked during the conference call was how his team can avoid being over-confident going into the Merrimack series.  It seems like a ridiculous question at first, seeing that BU hasn't handily beat much of anything this season, but in reality it's a decent point.  Mack has defeated the Terriers just once since 2004, and they haven't so much as sniffed the playoffs in that time.  Nonetheless, here is how Parker responded.

“If we’re overconfident, we’d have to check ourselves into Mattapan State Hospital. Not just because how good a team Merrimack is, but who we are all year. We weren’t even close to them in the game we lost up at Merrimack and they could have won either of the games that were played [at Agganis Arena]. 

Our team knows how good of a team [Merrimack] is. When I watch this team play, I’m flabbergasted that more people aren’t talking about how good they are and I was flabbergasted at how they struggled sometimes early on on the road, but now they’re playing much better on the road as well. [At times this season], they’ve had the best home record and the best power play in college hockey.

They present a lot of problems and their style presents a lot of problems – the way they stretch, the way they chip pucks out of the zone. They make it difficult for us to play our game and they make it difficult for any team to go after them, and we like to go after people. They make it difficult when they get the puck – they are so talented when they come across the blue line and center ice. They can bang and cycle with anybody.

I’m already afraid of them, so I don’t think my team will anything but concerned with a real good Merrimack team."

Jackie makes a great point.  People need to realize that this series isn't going to be a cake-walk.  Mack has a ton to prove, and they are going to be pumped up for their first chance at post-season play in six years.  I'm glad to hear that he isn't taking this team for granted, but I don't know how seriously his cocky team will take their opponent.  All season long, whenever BU has moved into a position of respect or esteem at all, they have sat down and admired their work instead of pushing forward.  I do worry that these players think too highly of themselves.

The entire transcript of Jack's conference call can be found here.