Goaltender Kevin Murdock has an interesting vantage point on the Lincoln Stars. Four days a week in practice, he tries to keep Lincoln’s best players from scoring. But when games roll around,  he mostly watches as teammate David Reekie shuts down the rest of the United States Hockey League. Don’t feel too bad, though. Reekie will be gone next season, and a trip to the Tier I national championship game last season shows that this 17-year-old kid has game.

“At the beginning of the summer I was just planning on going back to (Shattuck-St. Mary’s, Minn.) for another year, and that’s what coach had indicated,  too. But I played really well at tryout camp.”

“I like to cook; I like to barbecue. It’s kind of tough here because we don’t have a grill at our house. We got a George Foreman Grill, though. I actually haven’t done much cooking. Last week,  me and Jared Festler made grilled cheese, but that was about it.”

“I was meeting people at the airport when I got here. I met coach’s wife, and she asked me where I was from. Bradenton (Florida). She’s like, ‘Tommie Frazier’s from Bradenton.’ My dad had to explain to me later that he’s like a God here.”

“Last year I played 35 games in a row because the other goalie was hurt. You learn a lot being the backup. It’s different not playing every night, but you still have to be ready.”

“I was talking to one of the kids we just drafted that I met this summer. He asked me how Reekie was. I was like, ‘He’s ridiculous. I can’t figure out how he stops the puck. Nothing goes in.’”

“(Reekie) is calm between the pipes and doesn’t ever get flustered or out of position. He gets scored on and nothing rattles him. You can see he gets fired up a little bit at times, but he doesn’t change his style because of that.”

“Festler is the toughest for me to stop. I think it’s the whole roommate thing — he psyches me out. I don’t have a car, so he gets to drive me around. Last year my roommate was tough to stop, too, even though he wasn’t very good.”

“(Brandon Bollig) has the hardest shot, especially when he gets you on those places where you don’t have any padding. He got me on the neck in warm-ups at Sioux City a couple weeks ago. I’ve been wearing a neck guard ever since.”

“We practice penalty shots on Thursdays. Kyle Delaurell always had good moves, but now Jake Newton is always finding some tricky things to do, or Danny Baco. Baco always fakes going wide and then just slides it through the five hole nice and easy.”

“I sit by (Michael Sdao) in the locker room and between periods we always talk about stepping up and crushing guys. I get excited when guys step up and crush somebody and the crowd goes wild.”

“I know some guys that play for Waterloo. They say they have the next-best fans after Lincoln. I’ve been to a lot of college games, and even with rowdy college kids nothing compares to what we’ve got.”

“Shattuck is kind of strict. It’s a prep school, but it’s mostly hockey players and soccer players with a couple fine-arts kids thrown in. Then you can’t really get away from people living in the dorms.

“I came to Shattuck the year after Sidney Crosby. My coach would talk about how Crosby and Angelo Esposito would see the game, and those are the only players he’s coached that could see the game like that.”

“The third ‘Mighty Ducks’  movie was actually filmed at Shattuck. The scene with the horses and arch, that arch was from Shattuck. The school they portrayed in the movie seemed like a decent amount of people. Shattuck was only 300 kids. At Shattuck there weren’t really kids in the hallway.”