Q & A: BU Men’s Ice Hockey Alternate Captains Matt Lane, Danny O’Regan
By: Daniel Shulman
BOSTON – September 21, 2015 marked the beginning of the college hockey season with Hockey East Media Day. All 12 teams were represented by coaches and players at the event. WTBU had the chance to sit down with Boston University seniors Danny O’Regan and Matt Lane from the Men’s Ice Hockey team. The two provided insight into how preseason practices are going and ways BU will be improved in 2015-16.
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Q: So first off, you guys are coming off a really tough loss last season in the Frozen Four. How do guys feel this offseason and how is your conditioning going? You guys ready?
A: Danny O’Regan – Yeah definitely. It was a tough loss last year but we tried to just put it behind us and had a good offseason. Everyone’s been working hard so we’re excited to start the year.
Matt Lane – Yeah I would say the same thing. You know despite the loss, we had a lot of success and have things that we can take out of it but other than that, we’re going to put that behind us and just focus on this year.
Q: Now you lost Jack Eichel, Cason Hohman, and Evan Rodrigues from last season. How do you plan to replace the leadership that those three personified?
A: O’Regan – I think we’ve been able to replace them pretty well. They’re all great players and great guys who are tough to replace but I think we got a lot of guys on our team this year who are going to step up and take on leadership roles and scoring roles
Lane – Basically, we had a lot of freshmen last year and now everybody’s in their second year. So everybody is more accountable to elevate their game one more notch although we lost a few good players we still got a lot of good guys coming in and a lot of returning players too.
Q: A lot of the talk this offseason has been about losing Eichel. But you do have a lot of talented guys coming in. Have you had a chance to look at their game and talk to them at all?
A: O’Regan – Yeah we’ve been able to skate with them for the past couple weeks and you’re right, it’s a really talented group and I think all seven freshmen have a lot of skill and will be able to be effective players for us this season.
Lane – I agree. We’ve been skating these past couple weeks and the freshmen have been getting out there. They’re all coming from great programs and our coaches do such a great job with recruiting so there’s no doubt in our minds that we got a good class coming in and they’ll be big contributors on this year’s team.
Q: It’s not just BU that has a good recruiting class, it’s the whole Hockey East. How do you think that the league’s going to be as compared to last year? Tougher or a similar challenge?
A: O’Regan – I think our league proved that it was really strong. We haven’t really focused on too many other recruiting classes or anything like that but I mean every year it’s always a battle between all of the teams so I think we’re looking forward to the same thing.
Lane – We talked about it earlier with some of the other guys and we’re not really worried about what other teams are doing or who other teams have necessarily, more about how we’re going to win and how are guys are going to develop. And like we said, we feel like we brought in a good class so that should definitely be a huge advantage for this year.
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The new season certainly has some bright prospects. With the team feeling confident, this season could be better than the last. The first exhibition game will be on Saturday October 3rd at 4:00 p.m. in Agganis Arena against Acadia University.