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NHL WESTERN CONFERENCE FINAL: DUCKS VS PREDATORS

May 20, 2017

Peter Laviolette

Anaheim, California - Postgame

Predators - 3, Ducks - 1

Q. Fiddler said after your pregame speech to him he didn't want to do warmups. He wanted to go right to the game, he was pretty fired up. What types of messages did you give them about going after things despite what's happened to your team?
PETER LAVIOLETTE: (Indiscernible) we're in a tough spot with the guys that are not with us. We knew we had a tough opponent in front of us. Our guys put in a gutsy effort today.

Q. How would you characterize this effort? Descriptive words, courageous. What did you think about this game Mike Fisher and Ryan not here?
PETER LAVIOLETTE: I said gutsy. It's not the first time that these guys have played without some of their leadership pieces in place. Back a couple years ago, although it's not exactly the same, in that Chicago series, we lost Schlebler (phonetic) and Mike Fisher very early on. I really like the way our young players handled it and responded to it.

Today going in with the same thing happening, it's obviously we'd like to have a healthy lineup, but that's not the case. We had guys that showed up and played extremely hard today and hard fought and played against a good team, a veteran team, and we were able to walk away with a win.

Q. Peter, when you put this lineup together, you knew that you were going to have to make a lot of changes. You obviously found some balance in there. What were you looking for as you constructed these lines in terms of finding the balance with the players you had at your disposal?
PETER LAVIOLETTE: I think balance is probably the key word. We don't have the last change. We don't have the matchup. We needed to put in a lineup that could compete, all four lines be able to go out there and play against any one of their lines.

Q. Just a quick one. Is Mike Fisher day to day?
PETER LAVIOLETTE: I believe so.

Q. My question is about Gaudreau. Did he give you more than you expected? He took some big face-offs. Forsberg I think said it looked like he was playing for ten years in the NHL.
PETER LAVIOLETTE: He had a great game. You want to talk about the players that are out of the lineup, but I think it's important that the players who are in the lineup, that they contribute. Freddy in there today, after not being here towards the end of the year, after not playing in one single game, he got an opportunity, and he was excellent. He was good in the face-off circle. He had to play good defense. He was strong in the puck. He tried to make plays. It was a good game (indiscernible) we put him in the middle, where obviously are minus Mike and Ryan tonight, two of our centermen in a lot of situations. And I thought that Freddy really did his job.

Q. Given how special this team has become and given what the city has come to mean to you, you think about Monday and a chance to win the game to go to the Cup final, what's that emotion been like?
PETER LAVIOLETTE: The emotion will be great. Our fans will be great. Winning will be terrific. We've got to make sure we shore up and we do the work, and we're ready to play.

Again, it goes back to the opponent just understanding how they're going to show up and play, and we've got to match that and bottle that right away.

I think, looking back in hindsight, I've said it already, looking back, if we could do something over in Game 4, we'd choose that start and change our first period. We need to make sure we're ready in the first period.

Q. What do you think about Forsberg's game tonight? Not only getting the winner, but his full 60-minute game?
PETER LAVIOLETTE: He was terrific. You could ask me about any player. You could tell they played really hard, incredibly hard. Filip is a guy that normally we counted on for all situations. We've seen his minutes go up for him. Couple years ago he was 14, 15 minutes a night, to now a 19-, 20-minute guy that can play in all situations. He's a leader on this team, and I thought his game was strong tonight.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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