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NHL WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: BLACKHAWKS v DUCKSMay 20, 2015Niklas HjalmarssonBrad RichardsJonathan ToewsCHICAGO, ILLINOIS: Practice Day THE MODERATOR: Questions, please. Q. Brad, we talked to you right after the third overtime game in Nashville. How do you recover? Sure, it helps when you win. How do you treat the next day, going on? BRAD RICHARDS: You try to beat it the best as possible. Obviously we're flying today. Tried to get our meals in last night, get as much sleep as we could. A lot of guys tried to get some good sleep on the plane. But that's about it. That's all you can really do. It's the same, they got to fly today, too. We're in the same boat. Get home tonight, get some rest, more good food. Really got to forget about it. Got to move on and get ready for tomorrow. Q. Niklas, the ice time for the four defensemen is creeping up there. You're used to doing that. In this series, the way the numbers are, have you mentally prepared yourself to go this route the rest of the way? NIKLAS HJALMARSSON: I'm just taking one game at a time. That's all I can do and all I can focus on, focus on the next game. Yeah, was a lot of minutes last game. But we won the game, and we move on from there, start focusing on next game. Personally I feel fine. I have no complaints. Q. When you get to this stage of the playoffs, are you even looking at ice time at all or you don't want to look at that stuff? NIKLAS HJALMARSSON: Personal stats don't matter at all when it comes to playoff times. It's all about getting the win or not. Just trying to do whatever you can to help the team win. If that means to play a lot of minutes, try not to mess up at the same time, I'll try that (laughter). Q. Jonathan, best‑of‑five going forward. Talk about the need to defend home ice the next two games. JONATHAN TOEWS: It's huge for us. I think Hammer just hit on it. We don't want to look too far ahead. We'll take it one game at a time. Nobody goes into a game planning to play for six periods. You take it one shift at a time. I think considering the way we played, we know there's a lot more in the tank. I think we're excited to get back to home ice, to try to get them on their heels a little bit more, find the excitement, that energy we've had in our own building. I think we're happy where we are coming home one game apiece. But obviously coming into our own building, we want to take control of the series and having the puck more than we've had in the last few games. Q. Jonathan, first two games, how impressive has the goalie play been? JONATHAN TOEWS: You look at a game like last night, it's hard to kind of remember whether some of those goals or scoring chances were early in the game or even if they were in Game1. Some of the things that happened felt like such a long time ago when we're kind of talking about the game at the end of the night. It was going both ways. There was some exciting hockey, great chances. Obviously the goaltending I think stood out for most people. Crow was amazing on our time. We had a couple big penalty kills in overtime, in the overtime periods, we had a way to get to survive. Crow did what he's done all playoffs for us, let us hang in there long enough so we could get one bounce. Finally we finished the game. Q. Without disparaging the Wild or the Predators, is it fair to say that Anaheim is a step up in degree of difficulty? How do you feel your team responds to that? JONATHAN TOEWS: Of course. I think you get to this point where it's evident what's on the line, a trip to the Stanley Cup Final. I think both teams know what we're playing for. We expect, regardless of who we were going to play against coming into the series, it was going to be a step up. It was going to be tougher hockey. We felt that last year, same thing against L.A. So, yeah, we've had two really good tests for us so far. I think we can continue to bring it higher and higher as we go through the series. Q. Niklas, seemed like the penalty kills have been streaky, whether up or down. The way you played the last few games, can you see positive momentum with what you guys have done? NIKLAS HJALMARSSON: Absolutely. I think we're playing the way we want to the last couple games here. Yesterday we came up with a couple timely kills, huge kills. I think we're doing a good job, putting pressure, doing all the right things. Q. Brad, including the first two games, a common thing with the goals, traffic in front of the net. NIKLAS HJALMARSSON: Both goalies are playing really well. Big goalies that seem to fight through traffic really well. You know, when they see it, it's going to hit them most of the time. That's the goal for both teams, I'd say. You can really see their focus, putting a lot of pucks in the crease, crashing the net. We want to do that, too. That's how we scored. The puck probably goes wide, but we had players around in there, hits them, and Krug puts it in. That's always the key to success this time of year. Q. Jonathan, after the game, a combination of exhaustion and exhilaration. Can you describe the atmosphere right after the game and maybe even on the flight. JONATHAN TOEWS: Yeah, I mean, it's obviously a good feeling when you win. I think what we do a good job of, and we've talked about this before, too, especially after the loss in Game1, that you don't get too high, you don't get too low. I think that comes with experience. Last night we enjoyed it, we laughed and had a good time in the locker room. But before long, I think fatigue set in, we were ready to jump into bed, try to get as much rest as we could. Like Richy said earlier, we're ready to move onto the next one. We're here. Not a lot of time before it's time to go back to bed, get ready for another game tomorrow. No time to really sit around and enjoy a big win. The best we can do is feed off of that positive energy it gave us in tomorrow night's game, try to continue that good feeling. Q. Jonathan, this is the third time you've had to do this, long overtime win, you have to come back two days later and play. Anything you can take from the first two times? Can you take something from those tomorrow as a lesson? JONATHAN TOEWS: Yeah, I guess we'd rather be on the winning side of a game like that than a losing side. Like I said a minute ago, it's mostly how we carry it into tomorrow night's game, coming off a win like that. We can imagine it doesn't feel good to play almost six periods, come up on the losing side. That's something we need to focus on, is trying to have a great start like we did in Game1 and Game2, keeping that momentum we had coming out of yesterday's game. Q. A big help having home ice as opposed to away? JONATHAN TOEWS: Yeah, absolutely. I think we really like playing in our building so far this post‑season. That's another thing we have to continue, playing well at home. Q. You won a lot of close games in your career. The way the puck bounces and hits posts, it's a coin flip. Is there something this team has that allows it to keep itself in games to win it? BRAD RICHARDS: I think this team has a lot of experience. The more you do it, the more you stay with the process, stay with the structure, all this stuff. This team has been doing it for seven years. Your core group doesn't overreact. It's pretty even keel. As much as you see some loud noises, you got to just truck ahead and stay focused. But as far as anything else, there's no real way to tell. We don't like to talk about that a lot. Just keep going. Hopefully it keeps following us around. Q. Nik, how many times did you watch Shaw's non‑goal last night? NIKLAS HJALMARSSON: I haven't watched it once (laughter). It was pretty interesting. I didn't know about that. I thought it was a goal. I didn't know about that rule. He is one of the best soccer players when we play before the game. I can see him doing some stuff like that. It was a pretty unusual situation. But, yeah, at least I learned something new. Q. Jonathan, (indiscernible) talked about being motivated. Throughout the game he was driven. JONATHAN TOEWS: I think a couple of us at least had an idea of how he was playing by looking up at the clock and seeing he was the shot leader on the team. He was creating some chances. He was good for us on the power play. He got that first big goal to get us started. I don't remember how many overtime periods there were, a couple times he went around the corner, had a great shot. Another time he was on a rush, shot through traffic, just missed the net. He was getting close. He wanted to score, wanted to be the difference maker. Obviously was one of the guys leading the way for us in overtime yesterday. Great to see out of him. He's playing with energy. He's playing like we know he can.  We need everyone to be following that type of lead. Even when Krugs drew that penalty with that ugly hit there early in the game, Shawsy went right in there and took a shot to the head. He's not afraid to draw any attention to himself. Just create some energy for our team as well. Q. Jonathan, what is it like for you to see your college coach get the kind of opportunity he's about to get? JONATHAN TOEWS: It's great for him. As most of us know, it's not something you see all the time. I played for him I guess it's a number of years ago already. It was obviously a great experience for me playing for Dave Hakstol at North Dakota. I wish him all the best. I think he's going to do great. I can say that since they're in the other conference, we won't see them too often. He's got a lot of experience. Like I said, I wish him all the best. I think he knows a great deal about the game. Obviously going to that next level is completely different than the college level, but I think it's going to be an exciting thing for him. Q. (No microphone.) BRAD RICHARDS: I really don't know. Daydreaming really (laughter). THE MODERATOR: Thank you, guys. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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