WORLD CUP OF HOCKEY

September 15, 2016

Vinny Prospal

Martin Rucinsky

Q. Martin, I don't know what you guys felt internally, but you guys had some injuries and things like that. Some people seem to be overlooking you. Are you pleased with the way the team has played and can you surprise some people in this tournament?

MARTIN RUCINSKY: Well, obviously we lost some key guys due to injuries, and we put the best possible team that we could put together, and we're confident in it. I know we're not the favorites here, but at the same time, we're going to -- hopefully we can put up some good effort into each game, and we'll see what happens. We'll play as a group and obviously rely on our goalies, and hopefully we can win some games.

Q. With the goaltending situation, have you figured out how that's going to work, starter, second guy, or is it going to be a mix of both?

MARTIN RUCINSKY: We're not sure yet. We basically felt Ondrej Pavelec is going to be our No. 3 goalie, and then we -- within three games we played, exhibition games, we worked two goalies around, and one of them -- each one of them played one game, and we just split the last game between two of them, and we'll make a decision who's going to start on Saturday probably by Friday.

Q. Vinny, I was wondering what you thought of David Pastrnak's game last night and what he has to do to be a consistent player during the tournament.

VINNY PROSPAL: I mean, he's a kid who can skate like the wind and create scoring chances. But first of all, he needs to get on the ice, and we're going to keep playing shorthanded, then he's not going to get that opportunity that much. For us, in order for him to be on the ice, we have to stay out of the penalty box, and then he can utilize his speed and his hands.

He was great in the third period, made a really nice play on the forecheck, and then really, really nice play from behind the net for Radek Faksa to score the second goal.

Q. Your opinion of Team Canada after watching a couple of their games?

MARTIN RUCINSKY: It's always the same. Canada is one of the best, if not the best, team in the world right now, probably the best team in the world. And then their depth is amazing. Obviously they probably could put four or five teams to play in this tournament. They're strong. They're a good team overall. Probably they're the favorites, and it's going to be a hard game for us on Saturday. We all know that. But it's only one game. We don't play a series of seven.

Like I said before, we're going to get prepared for it, and we're going to -- we're going to give it our best on Saturday and see what happens.

VINNY PROSPAL: If we play well, probably any coach will tell you that you get time in the offensive zone. You don't spend as much time in your defensive zone, you get great goaltending, and most of those guys, most of the coaches will tell you that your best defense is your offense.

So for us, in order for us to be successful, we have to play disciplined hockey, well-structured, and we have to make sure that we all come back on the backcheck, and we'll just spend some time in the opposition end.

Q. (No microphone.)

VINNY PROSPAL: Well, there is always room for improvement. I'm not sure if any coach will always tell you that he's happy, but there's always room for improvement. And we had a chance to play three games as a group right now, and it has shown where we can improve and go from there.