Craig Berube | Practice | October 22, 2025

Craig Berube | Practice | October 22, 2025

How’s how’s camp like? Uh yeah, right now um I mean he’s doing he’s doing better today. Um but um he’s questionable right now. How do you describe what it means to the team? How difficult that hole is and he misses time? Yeah, it’s a hole. Um you know, obviously we all know what he does for the team and what he brings, but um uh you know, it’s part of the game. You deal with it and everybody has to step up. Feels like the team has kind of stumbled in its uh stubbing its toe kind of lately. Is is a little bit adversity a good thing in the long run? Well, it can be. Um, you know, we all been through these situations before and um it’s just a matter of fix, you know, working on fixing them and um getting the right mindset from me. It’s all mental for me more than anything. I think um you know, we just got to put 60 minutes together. We got to play to our identity for 60 minutes and understand what we need to do to be successful. Sometimes these guys, you know, it’s just got to keep banging away at it, keep working at it. But, you know, sometimes early adversity is okay. I mean, it’s uh it’s all part of it. You go through it throughout the year at times. Um, and we’re going through it right now. Why did you decide to make today an optional? Well, we got backto-back games coming up uh early be an early game Saturday here. Um so I just felt it was we got we’d get more out of uh meeting and talking with guys and team meeting and um you know guys can do what they feel is need needed to do today and there’s guys banged up we have to keep off the ice anyhow so it wouldn’t have been a full practice anyhow. So, we’ll get a we’ll get a full skate in tomorrow and then we got back to back games. In in light of that adversity, you look at the schedule, you got a bunch of teams coming up that didn’t make the playoffs last year. Do do you look at this stretch as an opportunity to maybe stack some points and Well, I never look at where a team was at last year and where they’re at. You know, it’s different this year, right? And also in saying that, I don’t ever look at an opponent whether they made the playoffs last year or not as somebody we could take advantage of. Like it’s hard league. Every team is good and you got to be prepared to battle and and and play the right way against any opponent. You know, Buffalo’s got a lot of talent. Buffalo’s a good team right now in my opinion. Like they’re they’re starting to come. Um you know, they’re doing some good things. So, I don’t look at it that way. I I focus on our team and what we need to do. Um, we we got to worry about what we’re doing. Where’s uh where’s Joe Law at? It kind of feels like we might never see him again going um yeah, I don’t really have an update for you right now on Joel. I mean, um, he’s doing fine. Like I said, like when he’s back, he’s back. Is he skating? Is he on the ice? Wherever he is, when he’s back, he’s back. That’s all I got. Do you communicate with Do you communicate with him or directly? Do I communicate with him? Uh, no, not right now. I don’t. Taking into account there are changes in personnel and all that sort of thing. Mhm. It is still a veteran group. So, is it surprise you to an extent that there is this mental I don’t know block, whatever you might call it or issue at this point? Um, I don’t I don’t know if I’m surprised. Like, I mean, whether they’re a veteran group or not, I mean, it, you know, it’s just finding chemistry. I think some of our new guys coming in finding some chemistry where they fit and and um trying to uh you know prove themselves almost a little bit, you know, and um then you know our whole team in general I in my opinion um is shooting themselves in the foot. um at different times in the game where there’s no need to do that. Like we didn’t do that stuff last year. Like if we lost the game, well, you know, we we didn’t shoot ourselves in the foot. We just got beat. Maybe it was a better team that night. Maybe they just couple bounces went their way. Um but it seems like we’re almost playing 50/50 hockey out there and we don’t want to do that. Like we want to play to our identity. We want to be a solid team. team, a checking tight team defensively. Like I talked about, we if you want to give teams oddman rushes in this league, they’ll make you pay for it eventually. You know, especially like Jersey got tons of skill. Um Buffalo’s got skill. So that’s the area for me that is hurting our team regardless. And then you know, and you got to clean that up. Um and if we clean that up, we’re going to give ourselves such a better opportunity to be successful. How have you felt, Craig, about the team’s play in the neutral zone? You talk about kind of 50/50 in between hockey. Are you seeing enough with purpose? Not enough. And we’ve talked about that. And there, yes, we do it for a while and but then it goes away and you know, so it’s got to be consistent all the time. It’s got to be your first thought. And if it’s not your first thought, it’s too late. That’s how quick the league is, you know. It’s got to be our first thought and we got to we got to get that back regardless of who’s on the right side of them. What can Austin and NY do to generate more of that offensive zone time you were talking about yesterday? Yeah. Um well, for me it’s it’s when you want to create offensive zone time, you you got to put pucks in with a purpose. Um, you got to then you got to go and get it and you got to be physical and you got to be heavy on your, you know, your sticks and things like that. You got to win those battles to get those pucks back. Um, and they just got to do a better job with it. Um, you know, that’s that’s really the bottom line. How close is Scott Lton? Do you have a I think he’s he’s getting he’s um I think he’ll probably be on the ice tomorrow, maybe. Um, so I think it might be his first day on the ice tomorrow. Um, so I think he he’s training really well. He’s doing really well in that department. Um, I expect him get on the ice here, see how he feels. Things going well. Hopefully he’s back on the ice with us shortly. You gone to Knlander with Matthews and N throughout the last, I guess, five or so games and points during the game. Is that a trio that you’d ever stick with full time? It could be. I mean, there’s obviously I I always want a little balance, but um it’s all it’s definitely something that I’m thinking about.

Head Coach Craig Berube addresses the media following Wednesday’s practice.

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