1-on-1 with DP – 93.7 The Ticket KNTK - One-On-One with DP: November 10th, 3pm - Rocky Russo (Lincoln Stars HC)

Episode Date: November 10, 2021

One-On-One with DP: November 10th, 3pm - Rocky Russo (Lincoln Stars HC)Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

It's time to go one-on-one with D.P. Coming at you live from the couple Chevrolet GMC Studios. Here is your host, Derek Pearson, presented by Beatrice Bakery, on 937 The Ticket and the Ticketfm.com. Happy Wednesday, everybody. Good stuff today. Thank you for joining us. You know the rules. 402, 464, 56685.

Start on him and text line, you can text in. if you have questions, comments, or you just need to vet. You want to call in the Honda Lincoln Hotline? Same number. Have at it. You can follow the Sartar-Haman live video stream. See what's going on in studio? You could do that on Facebook, YouTube, Twitch.

Chat rooms are open there as well. Nick will monitor and advise as best as can. Let's bring in. We're going to start with hockey. And tonight, man, it's a first-place team in, Lincoln. And as quiet as quiet kept, the Lincoln stars are not too very good. You probably want to check them out. Let's bring in head coach, Rocky Russo, play by play guy, Christiano. Let's bring him in. Coach, how are you doing today? Good DP. Thank you for having us on.

Cristiano, what's up, man? Nothing much. Glad to be on. Thanks for having us. See, you have, I have to start with you first because you have exceeded a company policy. you were the second person in the room with a New England Patriots hoodie on and that's one above our allowed maximum Rico, yeah, yeah,

Troublebaker. So I'm basically like jazz and fresh prints I'm about to get thrown out the front of the floor. Yeah, yeah, full leap. You know, don't know how you're going to land. We'll work on that though. We'll work on that. Then I probably shouldn't tell you

who I was rooting for Saturday afternoon. I don't have any. See, here's the thing, right? You've been all over the point. So you're kind of like me. Sports has kind of taken you all over the place. And you've involved yourself with a lot of people and a lot of communities. Who do you root for?

I will say 11 out of 12 weeks of the year, I'll be a Cornhusker fan. But when they're playing the Buckeyes, I'm no H-I-O guy. Gordon raced. See, see, this is, then I have to give you the same heat I gave every other Buckeye fan that's in my life. I'm really proud that Ohio public school system teaches you guys how to spell the state. And you've got a song that goes. with it we can all figure it out like it's only four letters right it's like it's like it's like marco polo for oh oh oh and then somebody will pop up out of the bushes and say

i oh everybody knows what we're doing i have way too many buckeye fans in my in my immediate circle so you know i i definitely understand and i've been to more than my share of uh bucky games and along the way so talk to me about this thing that is in a season that has been eye-opening and refreshing because it's a little bit back to normal where you've got fans in the building and you're able to engage and counteract. But for you, not being from here,

how did you get here? Like, how does this thing happen for you that now you're leading a program in a state that you're not from as it reopens? So, you know, this is my 17th year coach in junior hockey. I've been all over the country. I started in Youngstown, Ohio, where I'm from. I did four years there.

I did a year down in St. Louis. I did three years in Amarillo, Texas. Went out to Philly, did four years there, came back to Amarillo, did four more years there. And here I am in Lincoln. And all along that way from the late 90s, early 2000s, I was a kid, graduating high school in 2000, and the Lincoln Stars was the mecca of junior hockey. The Icebox was the place that every kid wanted to be, every coach wanted to be a part of, and then you saw it go downhill for the last five or six years.

And then the pandemic hits and things get really challenging for everybody. So we're on the back half of that now. We're allowed to have fans in the building again. We're starting to get that interaction with those folks and with the community. And we've got a good club. So I was fortunate enough to get offered the job to be the head coach here over the summer. My wife and I jumped at it. We knew what a great town Lincoln was, but we didn't realize how great it is.

We love it here. We've got an unbelievable neighborhood that we live in. The people are so friendly. It's such a cool place to be. And what you don't realize is living in Texas for seven out of the last 11 years, you don't realize how much you miss the trees until they're gone. And now I'm watching the trees change colors and just getting the actual four seasons. It's just been such a great experience to this point personally.

And obviously, the hockey's done pretty good so far. You're speaking of my language. I was in Houston before I got here. And so coming that crossover, I try to tell people, yeah, this was the right place for me to be. It absolutely is. And it feels like home. It felt like home as soon as we got here. And, you know, the welcome feeling that we got from our neighbors and the fan base has been unbelievable when it comes to supporting us. And obviously, they want to see a winner. So the more you win, the more they're going to get on board. But our guys are playing the right way. And we're competitive every night. We play hard.

We play physical. We're aggressive. We're scoring goals. We're tough to play against. The ice box is an unbelievable environment. And I know that once we start packing it out with 3,500 or 4,000 fans, it's going to be the most difficult place to play in the U.S.HL. Yeah, I mean, you guys went on the road, and I think it was Des Moines.

It's a packed house, 7,000 folks. Yeah, in Sioux Falls. We went there for their home opener. 7,000 fans were going to Des Moines this year. I have a sneaking, or this weekend, I have a sneaking, suspicion. It's going to be a packed house on Saturday night. But before that, we've got a big one in the ice box on Friday against those guys. See, that's what we're talking about. Now, what's the feature? I'm told that I need to go into my closet and pull out some of my Texas clothes to wear

Friday night. Yeah, it's country night if I can jump in Rocky. And I may have to defer to you being in Texas the last couple years. I'm from Chicago originally. So country music, not my thing. Why? Wear a no Patriots. Talk to him, Rock. From Chicago? Like, you got to be a bearer fan through and through if that's the case. Look, I got two older brothers that are significantly older, so we'd play NFL Blitz. The bears were always taken. I was looking through the lineups and being like, all right, what jersey stands out? It was red, white, and blue was Drew Bledsoe and the New England Patriots. I got a little lucky. Some guy came in after, and it did pretty well, I think,

over the next 17, 20 years. Good grief. It's hard to argue with those results. Young people. So Friday night, cowboy boots. Yep. 10-gallon hat, the whole nine. Rocky, what are you going to be wearing on the bench? I'm definitely going to have my cowboy boots on. I don't know if I could find a bolot tie in this town, but if I can, I'll wear that too. Our players are thrilled, excited about Cowboy Night or Country Night, whatever we're calling it. And I used to love walking in our dry room in Amarillo and seeing everybody's cowboy boots, cowboy hats.

The guys just, they live the culture of Amarillo, Texas. And I know our guys are looking forward to it. Joe LeMay is a Western, well, he's from Quebec, but played his hockey before this in Western Canada. and he cannot wait to throw that cowboy hat on Friday night. See, it's got to be cool. Give the folks a rundown of all the places this roster is from. What do we cover? We're all over the place.

We've got some guys from Canada, a couple guys from Quebec, couple guys from Western Canada. We've got guys from all over the U.S. We've got a player from Japan and Usato, who's a second year player here for the Lincoln Stars. So when we recruit, we recruit worldwide. And the U.S.HL is the best junior hockey. in the entire world.

And you see that. We've got Joe Lamey, who's drafted in the fourth round by the Washington Capitals. Say it again. Say it again. The Capitol San. I'm a Penguins fan, so we can get after that a little bit too. Northeast Ohio. I'm 45 minutes from Pittsburgh.

I was nine years old when they won the cup in 91. Like, I was a Mario Lemieux fan. That's my guy. And in fact, Yarmory Yager was a rookie that first year when they won the cup. And the guy's still playing pro hockey right now. It's unbelievable. But, you know, Joe's drafted by the capitals in the fourth round. We've got four guys on the central scouting list right now.

Both of our goalies, Caden and Barrico and Cameron Whitehead. Michael Mastro Domenico, who's committed to Notre Dame, is an 04 birth year out of Canada. And then Christian Kosis is an 04 committed to Providence. But we've also got a couple other guys that are going to end up going in that draft this year. So we've got a deep roster of future NHL stars playing right in the icebox here in Lincoln today. From the text line says, I've been a season ticket holder for 23 years, last seven or so haven't been the greatest. But he goes on to say, change from the past years, the guys between the pipes. Have to have top five goal ten in this league to compete for a championship.

Let's talk about the folks who man the pipes for you. Well, Cristiano can talk a little bit about Cameron White has stats, but he's been on fire lately. He's won his last three starts. He's a big six-foot-three, 200-pound goalie. technically sound. He actually reminds me of, I talked to an NHL scout this morning, he reminds me of Connor Hellebuck. And if there's any NHL fans out there, Connor Hellebuck is a Vesna caliber goaltender, which is the goalie of the year award in that league for the Winnipeg Jets. And I coached against Connor when he played in

Odessa, Texas back in 2011, 2012, and Cameron plays exactly the same way. He's big, he's mobile, he's technically sound, and he's committed to Northeastern University, and you're going to see him in an NHL sweater one day and definitely go in the draft here this spring. Coach, we've got a former catcher in the room. Can we put him in the pipes? Do you think we could? You know, he might be able to stop those bouncers, but I don't know if he's got the size to handle the pucks up underneath the bar.

I just think, you know, we like to put him out. I think we're going to start sending him out to some of these. I want to send him to a practice. Let's put him in the pads. We put our Zamboni driver in the table. the pipes a couple years ago. You better run a few laps first to get yourself in shape. Wow.

No offense. I'd be the same way right now. These guys are an unbelievable shape. No, I think this needs to happen. I need for just even for 30 minutes you having to lace up and tape up and go between the pipes would actually make my day. You don't have to wear skates behind the dish, though. So that adds a whole other element of playing in the net.

All right. We'll work on that. We'll work on that. Cristiana, we're talking about this. this first place team that still to the masses may be unknown, unfamiliar. When you're describing and giving the elevated pitch for the talent on this team, what do you say? I say it's definitely exciting.

And for me, this is my third season here, trying to have a normal year. Obviously, 2019-20, we were stopped in March. And then, you know, getting through last year was crazy with a really young roster and still going through the hurdles of not playing any games in the Eastern Conference, and we're still not doing that this year. But the difference, as Rocky's already prefaced, is the depth on this team. You have a lot of guys coming back from last year's group of the new guys, especially the goaltenders, both Caden and Cameron, brand new to the Lincoln Stars,

18 years of age, and Cameron 5-0-1, unbeaten streak through the first six games of the year, top two and say percentage, top five in goals against average. I mean, when you have goaltending like that, mentioned championship caliber goal tending and then you add the defense that they have. Master Domenico, Rocky you already mentioned, Henry Nelson. We're not even talking about LeMay, Dalton Norris, the team's

captain. It seems like every single guy has a role to execute and they're starting to do that earlier than normal. So the fast start is there. Now it's a question if they can sustain it and build off of it and there's nothing that has shown that they won't do that. I mean, this is

important because we're trying to build relationships and give exposure to things that deserve the light. And in this town that appreciates sports and hard work and coaches that care, personalities that want to tell the stories about this thing, we need to give it exposure. So why don't you share with the folks what we've been talking about and what's coming here on 93-7th ticket with Rocky Russo? Yeah, we're going to be starting a Lincoln Stars coaching show,

a coach's show featuring myself and Christiano as well as, My assistant coaches, George Lewis and Art Bry, Art actually played in the U.S.HL for two years. He played in Dubuque and Sue Falls. He went on and played college hockey at St. Lawrence University. George Lewis was a former assistant coach at Penn State University. He's made his way throughout the ranks. We've coached for six of the last seven years together, and so we've got a great rapport. And so you're going to learn more about us as people, about our players, about our

billet families. Our players live with local families here in town when they live in Lincoln for the nine months that we're here. And we're going to try to give you some personal stories about our players. We're going to talk some different sports. The biggest thing that we want to do as a Lincoln Stars organization is integrate ourselves with the Nebraska University. And to be able to do that, we're going to bring some of these local student athletes that are high-profile athletes in the university right now and have them spend some time with us on this radio show and be able to show how much it is important for us to support Nebraska athletics and really be the hockey arm of what they're doing right now. Obviously, they have hockey in Omaha with UNO, but they don't have hockey with the university

here. We want to be that winner option for those students to come and check out. Obviously, you've got unbelievable football and volleyball and now basketball's starting up, but there's always room for that entertainment value to come to the ice. box and check out a game. And so we're going to do everything we can to support the university and the student athletes and give the fans a great opportunity to hear what these young men are all about. We talked about puck drops and special event nights. You guys purposefully make it accessible for families to come and be a part of this. Christiana, what's your favorite, what are your

favorite events that you guys promote and things that go on in the building? I think something that just happened was our boo at the box and Rocky got to experience, you know, a Halloween game like that. The line after the game, number one, it was in a very exciting game. We were able to get a big victory, but also fans, you had the chance to go on the concourse with the entire team, not just one guy, two guys, three guys, but the entire team wrapped around the icebox and you got scores and scores of fans dressed up head to toe, even the parents dressed up in costumes. And the guys were loving it. They were active. And I think that's just a big draw as well, because these guys are just 16 to 20-year-old kids. I mean, they're not like, you know, something bad about having older guys do that sort of stuff,

but they relate to the kids more. They want to bring families out to the game because of that. Because if the kid wants to go on the parents Friday and Saturday night at the icebox, what can be better, right? So I think boo at the box is something we had in late October was outstanding. And, you know, we've got plenty of events. You could find a promotional schedule online, lincolnstars.com slash promotions to see what we have cooked up. We've got some great events coming up. I know we've got, we've got Princess Night coming up, my little two-year-old. daughter is fired up for that. Nick's excited. Nick's excited about that. Yeah, we'll get you a nice pretty blue dress. My daughter's excited about that. We've got our teddy bear toss coming up in

the middle of December. We're doing a special nostalgia jersey auction. We're going to auction off our black away jerseys that have been the staple of the Lincoln Stars for 26 years. We're going to auction that set of jerseys off, I believe, on December 11th. How many jerseys are there? There'll be about 25 jerseys. And those will be. So 24 will be auctioned off. 24 will be auctioned off.

Yeah, because they're sold out. They're sold out. They're sold out. Like, you can't buy them on the way. You can't buy them on the store. Those are coming off the guys back, autographed right there going right into your hands. So 23 jerseys will be auctioned off. I'm the auctioneer.

I'm the auctioneer. I'm the auctioneer. So we'll work something out. We'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. this you mentioned billet families and how important they are who should consider themselves for for for such a task and responsibility the folks that are listening we have smart caring listeners so who should be considered if they're listening to this who should say hmm this may be something that's for me and

my way to contribute i'll tell you what being a billet family is such an enriching experience for for these folks and i've like i said i've done this for a long time and i went into amarillo and in 2010 with no billet program. We built that pillow program from scratch. When I left last year, I'd bet you 70% of the families that started with me in 2010 were still doing it. And you've got younger families that have young kids where you can put an older 16, 17, 18 year old teenager into your house to really start to give them a big brother example.

You can get some of those empty nesters whose kids have moved out of the home and bring a little bit of energy into the house. And I tell all of our billet families, I want this to be a situation where the kid feels like he's at home. He's not a visitor. He comes in the house. He's home for dinner. He's got chores.

He's a fully functioning member of your family. He's not going to go sit in his room. He's going to sit out in the living room. He's going to watch TV. He's going to play board games. He's going to get involved with your family. And then the best thing that I can say about it is all my guys from when I first started coaching are all getting married now.

They're having kids. And I watch these billet families. They're at the weddings. They're there when the kids are born. They become a lifelong part of your family. And it's such an unbelievable experience. Also from the Texan, Adam says North Zone representing coach, folks are out here paying attention and listening.

Let's go up and down the roster a little bit because stars are stars, but personalities matter too. So let the folks know. Who should they be curious about? You know, Michael Mash for Mennico is a 17-year-old kid that I've said it on the broadcast a couple of times. It doesn't matter if you just got to stick in the face a couple of seconds prior or he just scored a big goal. He's always got a smile. I mean, that guy has an infectious personality.

He lights up the locker room. Then you have Joe Lamee. If he's not wearing a cowboy hat, he's got something else going on. The locker room's an absolute delight to walk down and hear the arrays of music that's going on. It could be from, you know, 80s rock to I even heard some Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin. I don't know what Rocky you got these guys. I got some influence in there. There we go, Rock.

I do. We had the drifters going last week. There we go. And I'm introducing them to some new music. There's another young man that's from San Jose, California, by the name of Antonio Fernandez. When he's not playing hockey, he's surfing. And he's a big time surfer. And his dad's actually the owner of our team.

And so Antonio spends all day long at the rink out in California. He's on the ice all day practicing. He gets in the car. He drives down two hours to the beach. and he surfs. You know who we need to get together with him from the basketball team? Wilhelm Bridenbach is a surfer from California. Those guys would be fast friends.

We need to get those guys together. We can do that pretty quickly. Matter of fact, maybe we'll get him out for a puck drop. That'd be fantastic. You know, to get him out there and do that. Brian asked the question, what ages of host families do they have? We don't have any kids. Their kids are 30, but they've been interested.

So, you know, we're open to a conversation with anybody. what we do is we do a home visit. We come sit down with you, take a look at your house, make sure the player has their own room, and just make sure it's a good situation. But I've had young families. Last year in Amarillo, I had a family that had a three-year-old daughter.

They were only 25 or 26 years old. They actually housed two of our players, and it was one of the best experiences for our kids because it was almost like the age group, the age division wasn't that big, and they got along, it's such a great way. And so I've got them from young, middle, 20s all the way up to 60, 70, 80-year-old folks that just love having those personalities in their house.

So we're open to anybody that's a loving family that wants to have those kids in their home and wants to treat them like they're their own. And some of these families have been doing it for a while and have more than one kid, one player at a time. Yeah, we've got one family actually that takes all of our high school, kids and she's got four kids in her house right now and they're all four high school kids so they're all they're doing their schoolwork online they go twice a week to study tables they've got to turn in their progress reports to me every thursday but she loves having those younger kids she's great at nurturing them

kind of holding them accountable to their school work and so we've got some families that have one we've got some families that have two or three and in that situation there's four how do those people reach out They can contact us at our front office. They could send me an email at R.Ruso at lincolnstars.com. And then we put them in touch with our bill of coordinator, Patty Johnson. She'll set that ball in motion, and then we can start to have those conversations. You said Friday night's a big night. Why?

Well, it's another one of those big promotions, but more importantly, we're riding a pretty good streak. We're playing a really tough opponent in the Des Moines Buccane Buccaneers. They've scored a lot of goals this year. They're going to play fast-paced hockey. They're going to try to run and gun up and down the ice. And so to me, I told the guys this morning, the points at the beginning of the year matter just as much as the points at the end. And we're playing well right now.

We want to gather as many of them as we can before Christmas break. What can they do, ticket-wise? I mean, you've got different packages put together, different pricings. What should they do? What should they look for? Well, you either look for a single game. You got flex. So, I mean, if you don't want to come and commit to all, you know,

20, 30 plus home games. You can get five, you can get 10. We really make it easy for anybody to come out. If you got a group of two, you've got a group of 10, group tickets, they're cheaper than just single game buyers. So, you know, packing the icebox is all what we're about. And you basically have whatever you want. You know, you can have...

You've got the suites up in the corners. The suites up top, John Henry's comfort zone is beautiful, very luxury seating at your own bar, private bathrooms. But for me, you got to be right behind the glass. I think that's just the best seat in the house when you got that action. And the fans really are all on top of you. And Rocky, you can attest to this too. The players as well, the way the building is built,

then the fans are packed in the icebox. You can barely hear yourself. No, I've actually, for our first three home games, I had to take ibuprofen in the middle of the game because I had a headache from the noise was so loud. I got to raise my voice beyond what's probably healthy for me to communicate with the players. Christian, is he blaming the crowd when it's him yelling?

Look, I'm a little higher than he is. So I can't. We don't really have a Russo cam just yet. We're going to put one down with me. I don't know if we can mic them up. It is a family show. I got miced up once last year, and that was a pretty cool experience, but I really had to watch what I said during that game.

A lot of editing, too. Yeah, I mean, I would imagine that there are folks out there that would pay to have Rocky on tape for the entire game. I might be able to come up with that video. It was a pretty cool situation. I know my nephews, all my nephews and nieces at home play hockey, and that was about the coolest thing Uncle Rocky could have done. Can we get some of that?

because I like to make that a part of the intro. I like to make that part of the show. I think I could find a way to do that. I think that's necessary. I think that's good stuff. Listen, this is going to be, this is good for us. Hopefully it's good for you. Plus, you know, when you come here, you get goodies.

So compliments the folks from Beatrice Bakery, you know. Goodies is an understatement, man. Tell them, like I introduced you to it. DP handed us a couple of those Beatrice Bakery cakes last week when we were in. it was you want to talk about out of this world i mean that the turtle nutcake was through the roof uh the chocolate merlo like they're they're fresh they're soft they're you wouldn't think when you buy a pre-packaged product like that you're gonna like it was like coming right out of the oven and i can't say enough about it and the first thing i did when i walked in today was went and

and figured out a way to have them give me some more here we go you're walking out with with arms full uh compliments of the folks from beatrice's bakery look i'm looking forward to what What's next? Let the folks know how to follow the Stars and you two individual. Well, you could follow Miraki on Twitter. I believe his is at Coach Rousseau 22. Is that correct? Mine is at CMS underscore 74 underscore, but also Lincoln Stars, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok. We like to post a lot of fun and unique content that you're not really going to see from not only a lot of teams in our league, but a lot of sports teams in general. We really like to hammer it with as much unique content and show you those personalities that we're going to be talking about throughout our show.

the players work in the Snapchat and the TikTok this week. You know how we're old? We say the TikTok. That's how you know. I'm with you. Yeah, I don't know how to do TikTok. I age myself a little bit. No, no, no, I understand.

Listen, welcome to the family. Oh, thank you for having us. You know, good stuff. Rock of your son, Cristiano, from the Lincoln Stars with World of Break. More one-on-one when we come back after the break. Download our app by searching 93.7 a ticket in your app store. You're listening to One-on-one with D-EGars. on 93-7 the ticket and the ticketfm.com.