Fire Insider: So Jon Busch, you are a huge hockey fan....who is your pick this season? Who is going to take it all?
Jon Busch: The whole thing, oh boy, I'd love to say the Rangers. If they can get through this first round actually against the Devils, they have a good chance. I don't know, it's been a couple early upsets in the first couple games, Detroit's down, Anaheim's down, so right now it's pretty much anybody's game in this first round, but its been some good games, but hopefully the Rangers can close off the Devils and get to the next round, that would be a nice little start for us.
FI: How about NBA, any thoughts on the NBA?
JB: I don't follow the NBA.
FI: Back to the beautiful game: How does it feel to be back in the saddle, back in the groove? I know you get fired up before games, is this kind of like a ritual for you?
JB: I don't know if I really have too many rituals, when I wake up in the morning it's just more of a mental thing, block everything else out that's happening around me and just get up thinking about the game and as we get closer to it, I like to get here pretty early and get into a routine, get my headphones on and not think about anything else but the game. Just try to focus in on it and get out early and have a good warm-up. That's really about it. The only thing that matters to me that day is the 90 minutes, the 2 hours that we're going to be on the field and just getting a good result whatever that might be.
FI: How do you prepare for the next game?
JB: I always go over the tape. The next day when we get back or if we are at home, I'll always look at it on Sunday on the computer and go through it and then Daryl and I will go through it on Monday and get his thoughts on it. There's always things you could say, maybe I could have done this maybe or done that. I'm very picky when it comes to my game. I like to strive for a perfect game, you know, I don't think it's ever going to happen, but that's what you ultimately go for. It's obviously easier when things are going well to pick up little things and go through the tape, but in regards to the saves, I think, that what I get paid to do, that's my job.
So at the end of the day, I think pretty much everything I've done so far. It's been pretty much routine, I think the save this past weekend against San Jose that was probably, I didn't realize it when it happened, how good of a save it was. I thought it was routine when it happened and then Daryl and I were talking about it on the plane ride home and he did say it was a very good save and then I looked at it again and it was a pretty good save. I was happy with it, like I said when it happened, it was just a quick reaction thing and I thought it was decent, but nothing too out of the ordinary per se, but like I said, that's what I get paid to do. I get paid to make saves and catch crosses and keep the boys organized. That's part of being a goalkeeper, you just do it.
FI: When you look at game tape, what are you looking for?
JB: The biggest thing I look at, you know, shots are pretty black and white, you either save them or you don't. The thing you look at with shots and when you save them, can I hold them or do I have to deflect them. Where if you deflect them, where do you put the rebound, do you get it wide or out for a corner, or throw-in or do you leave a bad rebound. Those are things you look at with shots. With San Jose, obviously they served a lot of balls in the box, early crosses, that sort of thing, so that's a case where I look at each serve that comes in and say, if I didn't come off my line to catch it, could I have come and got it and released some pressure or did I make the right decision to stay on my line. Those are more gray areas, those aren't black and white like shots are. Those are more looking at this maybe that maybe a little different positioning, but I think all in all after going over the tape, that one I was pretty happy with all my crosses and dealing with high balls, I played the balls I should have and I let my defenders deals with the ones they should have and I was happy with it overall.
FI: In San Jose, Dasan came into the starting line-up, first start for him this year, as a last minute decision. Does that effect how you think about organizing your defense? Do you tailor your organization of the backfield to the individual players in the game even though you're playing in the same system?
JB: Not too much, you don't want to make too many changes or change your mindset. The thing with Dasan, obviously it happened so late. He was warming up in the locker room after warm-up, so him and I talked quickly and just said don't overdo it too early. Get yourself in the game. We want to make sure we didn't try to play through him too much out of the back too early because if he wasn't warmed up to hit long balls or what not, so we just wanted to kind of help him get his feet wet and not put too much on his plate too early.
FI: How do you help facilitate transition out of the back?
JB: We're always organizing and talking out of the back. It goes from me to Bakary and Wilman or Diego, who ever is in there and then they use their communication to the guys in front of them at midfield. Part of my responsibility is to keep us organized. I was always taught that the best goalkeepers are the ones that don't see that many shots during a game because they're organized and keeping things tight. If you see 3, 4, 5 shots a game, great. You don't want to face 10, 15, 20 shots a game then that means you're not necessarily organizing that well. So we do work a lot on as soon as the ball goes back out, on us getting our line up. It allows me to cheat off my line more once our line's higher that way if a cross is served back in, I'm cheating to cut it off, whereas if we're deep, I've got to be a little tighter to the line. We spend a lot of time getting the boys out and leaving that space behind them and in front of me.
FI: Wilman had his first start as well at San Jose, you were dealing with two players coming back off of injuries, do you take that into consideration when you're trying to organize them?
JB: I trust them more than my telling them what to do because they're both experienced professionals. They know what they can and can't do and where they are fitness wise and so I allow them a little bit of liberty to make certain decisions where they know how high they can play or if they have to drop in a little bit more depending on if a forward's got a little more pace or this or that so a lot is them just doing what they normally do.
FI: In general, how is the season going so far?
JB: It's going well, you know, two wins and one draw and one loss that's not a bad start and hopefully we can keep it going and take it game by game. We don't want to think too much about the good start, just take it one game at a time and get three points against Colorado and we'll look on after that
