|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
NHL EASTERN CONFERENCE FINAL: PENGUINS VS SENATORSMay 12, 2017Mark StonePittsburgh, Pennsylvania - Practice Day Q. How confident are you that your guys' structure can cause problems for their speed? That seems like what this series is going to boil down to. MARK STONE: They got a ton of skill, a ton of speed, obviously. But we're just coming in here, we're going to try and play our game and we're just going to see where that takes us. Q. What does the word underdog mean to you? MARK STONE: I don't know, I think a lot of teams try to play the underdog role, but obviously we're not favored in this series, but at the same time we're still confident in our team's effort and our team's structural play, like we just talked about. Q. Does it, has it helped you at all that Guy continues to push that underdog and does it filter into the room? Do you think that's played a role in the success of this team? MARK STONE: I guess it could, but at the same time we're very confident in ourselves and we have a superstar defenseman that's paving the way for us and really following in those foot steps. I think we played some pretty consistent hockey, we have had a couple of lapses, but when the games got tough we really bore down and found ways to win. Q. How different is that to have a superstar defenseman as opposed to an offensive player like a lot of teams? MARK STONE: It definitely helps. He's one of a kind. I don't think anybody in the league really does what he does, so sometimes you can take that for granted, but nothing really seems to amaze us when he makes a play, it's just kind of expected. Q. The structure of your game, a lot of people have talked about the struggles and whatnot, how different is that from any teams you played out in the past or other teams you've seen in the league? MARK STONE: Yeah it's completely different. I never played this way, so at the start of the year it took awhile for us to kind of get adjusted to it, I think now you can kind of see our goals have gone down for, but it's substantially gone down against, and I think that's been the problems over the last couple years with us getting over the hump. Q. You guys played in so many one-goal games in the regular season, how much has that kind of helped you along the way like the last two rounds? MARK STONE: It's helped for sure. We have been in overtime six or seven times and we have come out on top most of the time. So, I think it's just resiliency, guys really found ways to get that big-time goal at a big time moment and I mean you look at certain games Pageau gets four for us, just a big moment, Kyle scores a huge overtime win for us in game 5. Guys are just stepping up at opportune times. Q. Does the structure you guys play, is that especially helpful in a best of seven situation where you can wear a team down over the course of two weeks? MARK STONE: Yeah, I think for the way we play it can get frustrating sometimes. So as long as we're sticking to it, like I said, we're just going to try and stick to that structure and if it gets us a series win it gets us a series win. We just want to play within ourselves. Q. Have you played against a 1-3-1 at any point in your career? MARK STONE: Last year played against Finland in the Worlds, but that's about it. But not here. Q. How different is it? MARK STONE: I'm used to it so I don't even know what the other one is. Q. What were the last few days like? Did you hear from a lot of people and there must be a lot of excitement around the team? MARK STONE: For sure. We had the last couple days off to kind of unwind that last series, but the city of Ottawa is excited, we haven't been here in a while, so they're excited this opportunity for us. And back home with family and friends we try to tune it out a little bit, but it's sure a lot of excitement for the people and all of us. Q. What does it mean to you, you play a lot of regular season games, to get an opportunity like this? MARK STONE: Yeah, I mean you look at some guys never get the chance to do it, so you want to take full advantage of it. So, we're pretty excited, I think as a group, we're happy to be here, but we want to have some success, too. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|