Liam O’Brien – Hershey Bears end of season interview

On Friday the Hershey Bears held their exit interview day. Over the next few days, we will be providing you the transcripts of each player’s interview with the media.

Following a strong 2017-18 campaign with 17 goals, Liam O’Brien returned to the Bears in a leadership role for the 2018-19 season. O’Brien finished the season with 28 points, spending most of the season on Hershey’s top line.

Q: Now that you’ve had a few days to digest how and what happened. What are your emotions looking back on how the season ended?

Liam O’Brien: Yeah obviously you’re very disappointed when you don’t win the Calder Cup, that was everybody’s goal this year. I felt like we had a really special group and I thought we were going to do something pretty incredible. I think we still did a lot of really amazing things this year. But yeah definitely disappointing that we weren’t able to get it done. Looking back at the year there’s a lot of positives, so I’m just trying to keep my mind on those.

Q: On those positive notes and how a lot of people on this team grew together. I really thought there were guys on this team that just took a huge step forward this year. What was it like seeing this team every single day just grow?

LOB: That was pretty awesome. It’s awesome to be a part of that, to see your teammates have success. It was great to see a lot of young guys’ maturity grow in their game throughout the year. And I’ll say it again, I think the coaching staff and the guys that were the leadership group here did a really good job, and I’m just proud of where we got to.

Q: Sort of a different leadership group than maybe in years past where there wasn’t just one captain to point towards, it was kind of a collective effort. What was that like being a part of that, both as a leader but also seeing other people step up and be leaders?

LOB: Yeah it was awesome. I think that worked really well for us this year, having you know more than six guys, we had seven or eight guys that really stepped up and took on that role, and it was great for the young guys to have multiple resources they could run to if they ever needed anything. It wasn’t just one guy that was trying to take care of everybody. It was a big group of us that were able to do a really good job. So, yeah it was awesome.

Q: For you personally this season in terms of your style of play and how you played this year, getting a lot of top line minutes. What was that like for you and how your game grew?

LOB: It was definitely different. Playing with Sgarbs and Barbs for the majority of the second half and you know a little bit in the first half too. That was fun. You know for me when I play with two guys like that I know what I need to do. And obviously my game needed to change a little bit. I had to make the small plays. I had to be in the right place at the right times, and it’s a little bit of a different game, but they really helped me out. You know it was great. I can’t complain.

Q: How was the bond with the guys different this year compared to other years passed?

LOB: I think the biggest thing was that there’s no clickiness. Every now and then you have a couple of guys on the team that are kind of outsiders, we don’t really have any outsiders. When you came into the room, everybody was talking to everybody. We were just a group of guys that really liked each other. You don’t come across groups like that at this level very often. I think we had a lot of young guys and even our leadership guys were all young guys too, so that’s special too. It almost felt like Juniors again you know, and it was great that way.

Q: You go into free agency, and I know it’s restricted free agency, but there is a core four of you, Barbs, Walks, and Nesser as well that were part of that run in 2016 and all came in together. You all could possibly be going your separate ways. What has this group meant to you here these last five years?

LOB: Yeah I mean I think it’s the last of that group right? Pretty crazy. I mean me and Walks have been here for five years. Barbs and Lewy four and Nesser as well. But it’s pretty crazy for me. I’m not a hundred percent sure I will be saying bye to all those guys, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be saying bye to most of them. Yeah, it’s interesting, it’s a different feeling for sure. We’ll see how everything plays out. Not too worried about anything right now but we’ll see what happens.