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NHL EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: LIGHTNING v RANGERSMay 24, 2015Jon CooperNEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: Game Five Tampa Bay – 2 Q. Jon, the Rangers obviously want to try to slow the game down to what might be their comfort level, but how comfortable are you guys in these sort of games as well? COACH COOPER: Well, if we're going to have any chance of winning, that's how we have to do it. And you look at the way sometimes you get caught up, and we did, judging our game on how many scoring chances we get; and really you should judge your game on how many you give up. And we got away from‑‑ our team has that mentality sometimes, and you have to pull the reigns back and talk about what we've talked about from the first day of training camp. It's not how many you score. It's how many you keep out of the net. And the boys committed to defense tonight. It was a heck of an effort. Q. I'll ask the Bishop question. He obviously responded the way Henrik did the other night. There was no doubt from you. What did you see from him that was a little bit different from him tonight in terms of how he played and the mentality, if you saw it? COACH COOPER: I would say he looked really confident in the net. We've watched this in two previous series. As the series have gone on, and the longer they've gone on, he's elevated his game. It's when you know he's back there and he's playing with that confidence, and the way he's playing the puck, he's making that first save. He's not giving up rebounds. He's just commanding the net. We feed off that. We have no doubt how he can play. You don't‑‑ with four teams that are left, you're not getting here without good goaltending. All great goalies left, and Bish is a top‑tier goaltender in this league, and he's shown it. Q. How important was the penalty kills tonight as far as keeping the momentum in your favor? COACH COOPER: Well, I thought that was the whole key to the game. We reel off‑‑ I mean, we take a few penalties there, and especially one of the big things that we challenged the guys was special teams. I mean, we have to step up here, boys. To give up two power‑play goals in, I think, three consecutive games, that's not going to win you anything. Our power play, we've got to get one. If we can win the special team war, you give yourself a better chance to win. But I really thought it kind of sucked a little bit of the momentum away from them, and then we scored after that. It was almost like we may have popped the bubble a little bit. I thought we got stronger after that. But it was a huge effort by our penalty kill. They get that first one, who knows how this game turns. I thought that was the turning point in the second period when we killed off those penalties. Q. You called a timeout and then from that point on, there seemed to be a progression in terms of the team getting better, taking command. Can you pinpoint a specific‑‑ as you saw the way the game turned, the turning point that you saw in the game? COACH COOPER: So, if we're going to say‑‑ because there were a couple things that happened. I thought the turning point was the penalty kills. But in that situation, I'd like to sit here and say I was a brilliant coach, but I called a timeout because our guys couldn't ‑‑ they were straight legged and done. But it's funny how it works sometimes. Because they had time of possession on us, and they had some things going, and the timeout worked in our favor. I thought, correct me, I'm going to forget the game, but when the referee got hurt the other night. What game was that? Game 2. We were rolling when that happened, and unfortunately the ref gets hurt, and it slowed everything down. And then we kind of lost our momentum a little bit. I thought that's what happened a little bit on the timeout because we won that face‑off, got it out and got him off. You could just tell our guys were fired up that that happened because we were a little uneasy there. We spent a lot of time in our zone. Like I said, I'd like to say that I felt the game, like we knew we needed a timeout, but they were gassed. But you're right, it did help us. Q. So much has been made of the triplets. Can you talk about Steven Stamkos and what he's been doing the last couple of games? COACH COOPER: I haven't done the math, but how many goals does he have now in the playoffs? Seven in the last ten? He's got seven in his last ten. You need contributions from everybody in your lineup. So Stammer's not scoring in the first round, triplets get us through it. Little bit of a combination of both in the second. Triplets start out and do their thing in the beginning of this series and Stammer and Fil, and Killorn, to be honest, I think they've elevated their game to as high a level as you can play. The one thing with Stammer, you look at his seven goals, he's not getting the sixth goal in a 6‑2 game. He's getting the go‑ahead goal or the one that you build off. It was only a matter of time. You can't keep him down forever. He was responsible on both ends of the ice. In the third period, he was ‑‑ guys weren't trying to do anything fancy. They were just getting it out. Their structure was great. But you need your boys to come through. And Fil and Stammer have been in this league for a while and they came through for us. Q. Sort of the same question, but when Stamkos doesn't score, he seems to be the lightning rod, why isn't he scoring? Tonight he has a goal and an assist and he's almost an afterthought between everything else that happened today. Is that sort of the life of being one of the elite NHL scorers in the league? COACH COOPER: Well, I think it's funny how it works, because the spotlight is on you so often that everybody just expects greatness all the time. To become great you do fail sometimes. And he's great. But you don't get there by just success. It's the guys that fight through failure that rise to the top. And Stammer, not that he's failed, but he gets criticized when he doesn't score a goal. I look at‑‑ you have to look at what the other team's trying to do too. It's not like they're putting their eighth pairing defensemen against Stammer. He gets the top guys. They get the top checkers, and they continue to fight through things. As this playoff has gone on, Stammer just continues to rise to the occasion. We needed more than Johnny's line to score, and since we put that group together and Stammer unselfishly moved to the wing, he's taken off, and you've got to really respect the captain for putting team first. I think his play has elevated because of it. Q. Ben took a shot in warm‑ups that looked pretty painful. Obviously, it didn't impact the way he played tonight. COACH COOPER: Regards, where did it go? Q. I'd rather not say. But it didn't look good, and I'm just curious if there was any concern amongst you guys before the game? COACH COOPER: I don't watch warm‑ups, so I didn't hear. That's unfortunate. His close ones were probably a little nervous, but I didn't hear anything, but I don't know. I'll go find out. Q. (Indiscernible)? COACH COOPER: These are the questions I'll probably have to answer tomorrow, but I don't know what TV cameras picked stuff up. We had issues on the bench, so I've got to find out more of what's going on. But, there was, yeah. Don't walk on our bench. That's what I'm going to say. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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