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NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE MEDIA CONFERENCEMay 7, 2008R.J. UmbergerSCHUYLER BAEHMAN: We now have with is Philadelphia Flyers center R.J. Umberger. In his 12 playoff games this year, he leads all Eastern Conference players with nine goals. Two of those goals have been game winners. Of course, Eastern Conference final represents the first time R.J., another Pittsburgh native, who credits Mario Lemieux for getting him interested in hockey as a child, will face the Penguins in the playoffs. Thank you, R.J., for your time. Let's open it up for questions. Q. How excited are you about facing your hometown team, especially the way you and the Flyers as a whole have been playing? Can you put into words the importance of having Danny Briere on your team and how he's picked up his game in the post-season? R.J. UMBERGER: For starters, I think I'm just more thrilled than anything to be playing in the Conference Finals. You don't get many chances in your career to do this. It's a great opportunity for us guys, especially us young guys. Playing at home is just icing on the cake, to play home in front of all the fans and everything. It's going to be a great time. Your other question about Danny, he's been a true leader for our team. He stepped up at the big times, scored big goals this year, really elevated his play in the playoffs. He's a guy you can count on to go out there and just be an offensive threat every time he's on the ice. Q. Coach Therrien mentioned earlier there's too much at stake for both teams for players to allow their emotions to get the best of them. As a player, how do you draw that line between being intense, physical, emotional and not letting it get the best of you? R.J. UMBERGER: I think he's correct. I think the players, especially on our end, we just need to be strong between the whistles. We need to finish our checks, be clean, just be hard to play against. You know, take the puck hard to the net, make the goalie have a tough time seeing the puck, make his day tough. Other than that, we've got to play hard to the whistle. The stuff after the whistle is going to put us on penalty and put them on the power play and those are things we can't do. Q. Can you talk a little bit about John Stevens, some of the changes you've seen in him since you've started playing for him in terms of his personality or in terms of his bench strength, if you've noticed a change getting this far in the playoffs. R.J. UMBERGER: I think, like anybody, a player or whatnot, he's a guy that's gaining confidence as he goes further and further. I mean, this is his second year as head coach. First full season from the get-go, from training camp on. Now that we're in the playoffs and everything, and our team's coming together, it's all from his leadership. He's a guy that prepares for every team great. We have our routines, our superstitions, but he's a guy that studies the teams real well, prepares us, and executes it at practices with us. I think he's a great coach. He's a great guy for us young guys. He believes in us. He plays us. All the players on the team love playing for him. Q. He always seems to have such a calm demeanor, sort of low-key. Behind closed doors do you sometimes see a different side of him? Do you get a different taste of him than we might see otherwise? R.J. UMBERGER: He keeps his emotions in check. He's always a guy that's even-keeled towards the press and everything. He's our leader. He never gets overly emotional outside. But inside the locker room he, you know, has so much passion for us to win, for us to play well. That's more what it is, it's more about us playing well, us playing up to our capability and playing hard, playing Philly-style hockey. You know, he definitely shows his emotion to us and gets excited at times. But he's a guy that definitely knows how to keep his emotions controlled. Q. I'd like to know if the Montréal series prepared the Flyers in any way to face the Penguins? R.J. UMBERGER: Well, I think one thing we can take from that series is, you know, the key to Montréal's power-play, not giving them the chances sometimes that we gave Montréal. Our penalty kill, although I don't think our overall percentage was unbelievable, but there were times we stepped up and made important kills early in a game. I know five-on-three at home at one time starting the first period, things like that that were big for us. But I know in this next series, moving on, if we want to continue, we have to limit the amount of power plays that we did give the other team, because this is another dangerous power play, just like Montréal. Q. A lot has been made of Pittsburgh's team being really young, an up-and-coming team. You look at the Flyers' roster and you are probably on average maybe even a little younger. Can you talk about I guess this year maybe being a bit surprised as to how fast you came on as a young group, what that bodes for the future. R.J. UMBERGER: Yeah, I think for the future there's just gonna be a lot of great players on both teams, a lot of probably seeing each other down the future, just huge battles back and forth. Our team, you know, after last season, no one expected us to be in this situation. But I think the guys that came back came back with the right mindset, worked hard. The new players that we brought in were just great players that add to this team. When you have that situation, it's how fast you can come together and gel as a team. Throughout the year we did that. We had some hard times, but I think that made us stronger as a team, and right now we're just all clicking together as one big unit. Q. What have you learned since that first playoff series you played in '05/'06 when you did receive that kind of -- you were out of the series with a concussion. Was that kind of sticking with you the last couple years? Did you learn something about the differences between the regular season and playoff hockey at all? R.J. UMBERGER: Yeah, that's what I took from that. I did come back from the hit later on in the series and play. What I did learn from that series is the level it takes to play at the playoffs. You have to really rise your game up and be mentally prepared. It's tough on your body. It's tough to be focused. But you have to do it. You have to just get it done. You know, everybody says it's just another level. It's a cliché, but it's absolutely true. Q. The Flyers have as much attention to their history as any U.S.-based team. Coming from Pittsburgh, going into that environment, what have you learned about the Flyers' history and now being a part of it? R.J. UMBERGER: I learned a lot about the history here. Wasn't aware of it before I came. But I learned of the Stanley Cups in the '70s, the players, the types of players they had. You learn about the Broad Street Bullies, where they got that nickname from, how it just seems to stick here. This is a city that is passionate about their sport. They're desperate and waiting for another championship. They're waiting for a team to be heroes. I think that, you know, it's a great place, a great opportunity for us. I think if we're able to move on, I think it's a city that will just honor us for the rest of our lives. Q. It's been 25 years, the Sixers won the last championship there in '83. Do you hear about that like every day? R.J. UMBERGER: You know, you just hear about how it's been a long time. Like I said, they're starved for a championship. They're just chomping at the bit for a team to do it. The team that does it next is going to be a team that is really going to be a team that is just looked at tremendously here. Q. This might be a bit of ancient history. After you left Ohio State, you didn't have a contract, you couldn't agree with the Canucks, what did you do that year? How did you manage to keep your sanity when everybody else was playing? R.J. UMBERGER: That's a great question. Actually, it was tough. It was hard to not be playing. My whole life, that's all I wanted to do, is play. It was the worst thing. I did go half of the year up to Ann Arbor, the national program there, and practice with them. Once we got past the halfway part of the year, I came back home (loss of audio). Q. You played so well against the Penguins in the regular season. Is there any added motivation when you play against your hometown team? R.J. UMBERGER: Definitely. You know, you get excited to play there with everybody watching. More than anything, it's the amount of emotion you have inside. The conference final now, I can just imagine it's probably going to be one of the most intense times of my life. Q. What do you have to do to continue the scoring pace that you had in the second round? R.J. UMBERGER: Well, I don't know if you can keep that exact pace up. For me personally, I just got to keep playing hard. A lot of second and third efforts, never quitting on plays, getting the puck to the net. I've been shooting the puck a lot more. Sometimes when you shoot the puck, it finds a way to get in the net. SCHUYLER BAEHMAN: Thank you, R.J. Good luck the rest of the way. R.J. UMBERGER: Thank you. End of FastScripts |
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