U men’s hockey: Fairchild on his recent four-assist game
Posted on November 7th, 2008 – 5:25 PMBy Roman Augustoviz
Sophomore defenseman Cade Fairchild is coming off his best game as a Gopher. He had four assists last Saturday in Minnesota’s 6-3 victory over Minnesota State, Mankato.
“I didn’t even realize it until the end of the game when someone told me I had four,” Fairchild said. “I kind of kept getting the puck to the guys and they kept scoring. Three of them I think were on the power play, so obviously that feels good especially after last year. One of the biggest criticisms from last year was that our power play was not getting it done.
“I still hold strong that it was not necessarily the power play, we just were not scoring goals. We had shots, kind of like we had this year. It’s the same kind of thing. … The chances have been there, it’s just about putting the puck in the net. That’s as simple as it is.”
So is the Gophers pp going to keep producing? “Hopefully, the floodgates are open. It’s a big confidence thing,” Fairchild said. “You can even tell in practice. We wored on it [the pp] a little bit in practice [on Tuesday]. Just kind of passing the puck around and you could tell our guys were more confident. I hope we can continue to build on that.
“I really like the personnel that we have on [the pp] right now. Each guy has confidence in the other guy that we can make plays. And the coaches have confidence in us to make plays and so far, so good.”
Fairchild said he feels real comfortable being at one of the points on the power play. “When you have guys like [Jay] Barriball and [Jordan] Schroeder and [Ryan] Stoa and [Mike] Hoeffel to pass to, life isn’t too bad,” Fairchild said. “I do feel comfortable getting them the puck. And I feel they have that same confidence in me, that I am going to be able to get them the puck. Hopefully, they can put a couple away.”
Fairchild said he can’t remember the last time he had four points in a game. It was probably in high school [at Duluth East] or bantams, he said.
