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NHL WESTERN CONFERENCE FINAL: DUCKS VS PREDATORS

May 12, 2017

Randy Carlyle

Anaheim, California - Pregame

Q. Randy, how fast did this team turn the page just as far as -- like how did you handle turning the page from Game 7 two nights ago in a series that had lots of ups and downs and emotional dips, to getting ready for Nashville? Without giving me too many secrets --
RANDY CARLYLE: I don't think there's any secrets when you only have 48 hours to prepare for the next series. I don't think there's any secret recipe other than the fact what we tried to do is we tried to give our players as much rest as possible yesterday. We had a meeting. There was an off-ice workout that was made available, and we had a meeting afterward over lunch to discuss the opposition a little bit for some prep work on systems and whatnot and what they like to do, tendencies. Today what we did was normal pre stuff what we would have done preparing for Edmonton again. Just the situation obviously has changed when you have to play today in the conference final against the Nashville Predators, and the type of hockey club that they are and some other things that they like to do and some of the things that we're going to have to do to have success against them.

Q. Randy, for players, what are the biggest things that they have to do to manage themselves and manage their bodies in particular over the toll of a long playoff run or the toll of possibly playing several weeks, perhaps even two months?
RANDY CARLYLE: Again, what we've tried to do is we've tried to set out a couple of rules or guidelines that I've talked about making that list. We've provided our players with a list that we provided before the start of the Playoffs, that experience that we've had as a coaching staff in going through these situations, that there are some things that we think that you should adopt in your day-to-day preparation, day-to-day living. And as I said, there's 20 things on the list, I think, and it's not something that's way out of left field, it's just simple basics that we think are important, and hopefully, as I said before, our players -- we don't expect them to live every one to the tee, every one of the 20 things that are on the list, but if they can pick 10 of them and they can get exercise and live by 10 of those points that we put up for them that we would be accomplishing something.

Q. Are there maybe two or three essentials that you can share?
RANDY CARLYLE: That I can't tell you. You'd have to kill me.

Q. You touched on this briefly in your first answer, but what's the challenge for you to prepare your team to go from the style of play that the Oilers had to a different style in Nashville, just a couple things?
RANDY CARLYLE: Again, it's not like we haven't played Nashville before. It's not like there isn't somewhat of a pre-scout already set and a file that we create on the teams we play through the course of the season. We watch all the games. The players watch the games. There's a lot of -- I wouldn't speak to every player being glued to the television, but I know most coaches would be watching the games, and a lot of the games were on prior to our games, so it's natural that you're going to get interaction with the players and they're going to watch what's going on in the St. Louis-Nashville series and the Nashville-Chicago series that I think that grasped the world's attention or the hockey world's attention when they eliminated Chicago in four straight. So all those things combined with our history of playing against them and knowing their traits, they haven't changed dramatically as far as personnel from last year. They're pretty much the same team, and the majority of the players that are in our dressing room fortunately played against them last year in the Playoffs. There's not a lot of surprises from lineup to lineup, from this year to last year.

Q. In the post-season, is the power play maybe one of the biggest challenges for a coaching staff to get to run properly because of the fact that most teams only have two or three looks on their power play, and you're going to play this team four, five, six games in a row, whatever it is, presumably it's pretty easy for them -- easier for them to adapt when they're seeing it every game as opposed to when you drop in during a regular season once every few weeks. Is that a big challenge?
RANDY CARLYLE: Well, it's a challenge because of the personnel that the opposition is going to roll out. You know, there's no secret that their back end is probably at the forefront of their offense so far in the Playoffs. When you have Fiala, Subban, Ekholm, Josi, if you look at the number of minutes they played and specifically the power play setups that they run, they run a lot of one-timers off each side, and they're not really what I would say a complicated group. They move the puck around and shoot it, direct pucks to the net and shoot it. Again, there's some things that you have to make sure that you're in certain positions and cut off passing lanes and whatnot, push it to the outside as much as possible, and those are the challenges that come, because I don't think they're really going to change dramatically from what they've been doing. Why would they.

Q. And neither will you?
RANDY CARLYLE: Well, we have to get better at penalty killing. I'm telling you. If we're not better in our penalty killing, then we're going to be susceptible to one of their strengths, being their power play.

Q. When you think back to the Ryan Getzlaf that you first knew in 2007, the 22 year old kid winning his first Cup, can you talk about the evolution you've seen of him as a player but also as the leader that he's become?
RANDY CARLYLE: Yeah, the thing is that the level of player that Getzy entered into the league at was pretty high level, and I've talked to this before about the lockout, how much of a benefit it was for those younger players that potentially would have been playing in the NHL that year, that they went back and played another year of junior and gave them some maturity, and when he first started with us, we sent him to the American Hockey League, both him and Corey Perry and Dustin Penner because we felt in the situation we were going to be in, we didn't want them exposed or put them quite possibly into a situation that they couldn't handle, and they went to the American Hockey League, and I think they scored 35 points in 30 games and kind of tore it up, and they got 90 or 100 points as a line. We felt at that time then they could come, and we still played them on the fourth line. They were fourth-line hockey players, but they were second-line power play. So I think that was the start of it.

And then as far as what's happened, there's a lot of water under the bridge, be it the Olympics, World Cup of Hockey, Getzy has been a part of, and people seem to forget that he's the fourth-line checking center of that hockey club. So we think he can check. If he can check for Team Canada in the World Cup of hockey, I think he can check for the Anaheim Ducks in whatever role you put him out there.

And off the ice, obviously, the maturing of an individual. He's much different than you would have thought as a 22 or 23 year old guy. I was looking to get married and he wanted to settle down and he wanted a family life, and he chose that. And he's moved a few times in this area to find that comfort zone, where his family -- he can grow his family and become integrated into the community with four kids, young kids, and stuff like that, and drive some nice cars. (Laughter).

Q. Randy, in studying Pekka Rinne, what are the attributes that he has that can make him tough to beat at times?
RANDY CARLYLE: He's a very active goaltender in the net from that standpoint. He likes to get out and play the puck and set the puck up. I don't think there's anybody in the league that has as much confidence as he does as far as when pucks are in the glass and dump-ins, high hard around, he's out there trying to block with his body where most guys wouldn't attempt to track that puck down on dump-ins. I think that separates him, number one, when you're doing your pre-scout that every time you give him the puck, you're going to be fruitless in your forecheck if he's allowed to play like a defensive back.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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