On the morning of November 5th, the Sheriff’s Patrol went one-on-one with the head coach and GM of your Bismarck Bobcats, Layne Sedevie.
Sheriff: Last week we talked about patience, how do you feel after your teams’ split.
Coach Sedevie: Well obviously, I think the big thing is we wanted more than two points on the weekend. That being said, I thought we played some decent hockey at times. I guess the frustrating part for us was anytime you play three and three and have your best effort on the third night, it seems like you have the most jump, you know, I think that’s frustrating for us as a staff, not to have it for the first two games. The good part was we played really well on Saturday, in our building, a lot of guys got points, obviously good goal tending — something we desperately needed.
Sheriff: Sometimes there are points where a coach looks like he needs a hug, are you to that point yet?
Coach Sedevie: I don’t think so, you know if we had our team last year and our record was seven and ten I think we would be pretty upset. When you have 13 or 14 returning guys of that caliber this year, you know, when we started this year we had 30 guys in camp and 21 of them were rookies, so that being said that’s a lot of new faces. I think it’s going to take time with this group. Hopefully, we feel, it doesn’t take as long as the end of December or January. Saturday night was a step in the right direction.
Next, Coach Sedevie laid out his recipe for success. A recipe that the Bobcats must follow to get themselves out of a seven and ten hole.
Sheriff: Seven and ten is obviously not where you want to be, how do you fix it?
Coach Sedevie: Well, I think with this group, patience is a good word, but obviously seven and ten is not where we want to be. I don’t think it’s where anybody wants to be. We’re actually right there, we are a point out of a playoff spot, and obviously these weekend games are huge. Four points against Brookings, who are a point ahead of us. With this group, we have to take it one game at a time, one period at a time, one shift at a time. We’re just trying to win periods of a hockey game, and keep making those steps in the right direction. I think one game at a time for this group is what we need to do. If we do that, and we play with the effort that we had in the third period on Friday night in Brookings, and the effort we had here Saturday night, I think we’re going to put a few more wins in the column than we have now.
Sheriff: Do you ever want to pull aside the veterans and ask them what the heck is going on out there?
Coach Sedevie: I think that quite honestly, besides Alex Bitsakis who I know you don’t call a veteran, but he has been a guy who’s been a steady for us between the pipes, but I think some of the reasons we’ve struggled early on has been our veteran leadership, not off the ice but on the ice. You know, some of our veterans are making key mistakes, and I think anytime you have a young group you’re gonna lean towards those veterans for the first 20 hockey games. I think when we have struggled they have maybe not carried the weight we thought they would. I think when we have done a good job, either they’ve gotten us started or they’ve picked up the slack where they were last year. Those guys have to do a better job on the ice. They have leadership roles off the ice, but on the ice they definitely need to step up their performance. You know, Giesler, Willox, guys on our back end, Wallace, German, guys who have been through the trenches are guys who are called on a lot in the big minutes and they definitely have to perform. It’s one thing when your rookies make mistakes, but our veterans can’t be making those mistakes.
Sheriff: How do you address issues with your players? Do you sit down and have a meeting with them, or are you not to that point yet?
Coach Sedevie: No, we’ve had meetings with them. It’s been with our veteran guys, we have sat them down and I think it was a good thing. It was something that needed to be done, obviously after not getting four points at the start of the weekend we did sit down with our veteran guys and stated what we need from them.
