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NHL EASTERN CONFERENCE FINAL: LIGHTNING v PENGUINS

May 17, 2016

Victor Hedman

Tampa, Florida: Practice Day

Q. How nice was it to have Straly back in last night?
VICTOR HEDMAN: It was great. He looked great, looked like he hadn't missed a beat. It was very good. He got on the score sheet right away. It's obviously really good to have him back.

Q. Victor, what do you take out of the first two games in terms of how your team played?
VICTOR HEDMAN: I think we're under 20 shots in both games, and that's not good enough. Passing up a little bit too much. Yeah, a little hesitant in the defensive zone. But I like -- I love the way we compete, we work hard, we play good defensively.
Vas has been unreal for us. So we take some good stuff out of it, but there's always things we can improve.

Q. Puck possession maybe your biggest concern?
VICTOR HEDMAN: Yeah, we want to play with more speed, and I think we -- especially yesterday, too many turnovers, and that kind of feeds into their game. There's two fast teams going at it, and it's high pace out there. But obviously, we've got to possess the puck a little bit more and get pucks deep.

Q. In particular, what do you think their speed did to you guys last night? Usually it's the other way around, you guys doing that to another team.
VICTOR HEDMAN: Yeah, but like I said, turnovers feeds right into their game. They're a skill team with a lot of talent. Yeah, two good teams going at it. It feels good for us to turn back home now and go one game -- winning Game 1 was huge. Obviously, we want a different outcome there in Game 2 when we took it to overtime.
That's how it goes. There's going to be ups and downs, and we had a good experience going through this last year. You can tell the guys are not too rattled about it. We've just got to refocus and get ready for this.

Q. You've been pretty much paired with everybody on defense in this playoff series. What does Stralman do to kind of complement your game? You guys have played together for a while?
VICTOR HEDMAN: Exactly. We've been playing together almost two years. We have a chemistry going into last season. It's going to be the same. Like you said, we're confident and comfortable playing with whoever we're put out there with. So I think our D-corps has been doing a pretty good job. Slater is coming in and playing great. It doesn't really matter who we're paired up with, we've just got to get the job done, and get a win under our belt and keep going.

Q. You talk about the shots being (inaudible). It's two games now in this series that's almost -- it's about a third or a little bit less. Is that a (inaudible) trend for you at this point? You haven't been able to have the puck enough to get it to the net? And are you concerned at all?
VICTOR HEDMAN: I don't know if you'd call it a concern, but obviously, you want to have more shots. You want to touch their goaltender a little bit more. For us, it's all about puck possession, like you guys said. If you don't have the puck, it's tough to shoot, but at the same time, you can't pass up other opportunities when you have a chance to shoot.
When you shoot the puck, it's going to create scrambles and chaos on their end. That's what it did to us (inaudible) shots. It's not a fluke that Vasi was obviously great keeping us in it, but being outshot 2-1 is not good enough for us. We know that. Hopefully, we have to be better at that tomorrow. I think we will be. If we do that, I think we're going to have more success.

Q. Can you take something out of the fact that really you guys weren't necessarily on point last night, and yet you were one break away from coming back here up 2-0?
VICTOR HEDMAN: Yeah, absolutely. It shows the strength, and to be down 2-0 early in the game and come back in the first period. I think, especially the third, we had opportunities to win it.
Killorn rang one off the cross bar, and Palat had a great chance. So we were right there. That's a little frustrating, obviously, when you have the opportunity to go up two games, but at the same time, we knew this was going to be a long series. We knew this was going to be a tough one. So to come home with a split, we'll obviously take that and move forward.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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