Shawn Horcoff Speaks To The Media On Exit Interview Day

Dallas Stars forward Shawn Horcoff spoke to the media Monday, April 13th during the Stars’ exit interview day. This was the last day that the media would be able to freely talk with the players and coaching staff until training camp in September.

Overall, Shawn Horcoff had positive things to say about the team and the direction they were heading. He also expressed his hope to come back. Horcoff will be an unrestricted free agent this summer, and it will be interesting to see how Dallas handles his situation.

Here is coverage of Shawn Horcoff’s entire interview:

On ending the season early:

It’s tough. Especially since I think we’re a hell of a team to tell you the truth. I think the last three games or so you really saw what we could do. It’s tough because you get to my stage in my career and you don’t want to waste opportunities with good teams and I feel like we wasted an opportunity this year. It’s just so tough and you can’t go through stretches, like where we had a 1-7-1 streak, and you can’t do that. The West is tough, and our division is crazy, so you just can’t afford it.

On how they started the season:

We actually got off to a good start. Talking with Lindy [Ruff] today, we started the season at 4-1-2. But there was a stretch there for about 15 games where we couldn’t win a game in the third period. We lost quite a few of those and gave up a lot of valuable points and it took us too long to figure things out. We didn’t understand that we could score goals and needed to focus more on defense. Goals are going to naturally come because of the talent we have throughout the lineup. We were deep in that regard. So that’s the most frustrating thing. You end the season playing so well and you look at the teams in the playoffs and know you’re better than them.

On if any preseason hype helped derail them:

Probably. The mindset that we were going to beat teams and outscore them every game. It might be a little bit of that. I think at the end of the day we led the Western Conference in goals, and we’re still not in the playoffs. So the proof is in the pudding that you have to play defense to win. So I think that will be our goal going forward next year, a really big and sound focus on defense. You have to be able to close games out.

On his future with Dallas:

I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’m going to meet with Jim [Nill] this week. Obviously I hope to stay but I don’t know, I have to talk to Jim and see what they have in store for me. I thought it was a good year for me and I looked pretty good. I was obviously happy to stay, especially past the deadline. Since then, I think I’ve played some really good hockey, hopefully enough to warrant a new contract. But we’ll see. We’ve got a lot of forwards here so we’ll have to see what happens.

On if the young team was fun:

Oh, it’s so fun playing with [Brett] Ritchie and [Curtis] McKenzie. I’ve been in that role before, but those two have a really bright future. But that was a good little ten game spread there because you just see how happy they are. They’ve got that youthful exuberance and it’s nice to see players come in and get success at a young age and just happy to be in the NHL.

We will have complete coverage of exit interview day as the week goes on and into next week! Make sure to check Blackout Dallas for previous interviews we put up that you may have missed, and also check back daily for new updates as we make them accessible!

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