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NHL WESTERN CONFERENCE FINAL: DUCKS VS PREDATORS

May 22, 2017

Randy Carlyle

Anaheim, California - Pregame

Q. With Gibson out on the ice now, how optimistic are you about him for tonight?
COACH CARLYLE: When they skate, usually that lends you to believe that there is a great opportunity for him to play. But I haven't talked to him. We'll wait until he is off the ice and has a conversation with the training staff. And then we'll make a decision based upon that.

Q. Not to get too far ahead of ourselves, but is there a little bit of a gamble in that? You have to win tonight so you obviously want Gibson out there. But if you win tonight and can't go in Game 7 because he aggravates something, what have you accomplished, I guess? Does that enter into your mind at all?
COACH CARLYLE: No, not really you go with the people that tell you they're healthy. We ask players to come back from injury, and we don't ask them to play two minutes, we ask them to play the 60 minutes or whatever is required. So we don't think about that.

We're in a win-now mode, and we do that in every Playoff game, every regular season game and even to some degree every exhibition game.

Q. All these series are physical. How much more physical has this one been than the typical Playoff series?
COACH CARLYLE: I think there's been a high level of physicality, obviously. There's lots of big hits. There's lots of one-on-one battles that are taking place all over the ice, and I would expect that that's going to continue tonight.

You have two hockey clubs that are vying for a position to move on to the Stanley Cup Final. And they're giving everything they've got.

Q. You faced elimination before during your coaching career. How do you approach it differently or do you now as opposed to maybe the first time that you faced it?
COACH CARLYLE: Oh, the first time I faced probably I can't remember. So you don't really refer back to those situations. I think you refer back to the positive ones that you were able to accomplish what you needed to accomplish.

Obviously with experience, there's certain things that I think that it's the responsibility of the coaching staff to provide. And one is leadership in these situations, to have a direct path and a plan put in place and support the plan.

And as always, it's about making sure that your players are focused on what the job. And it's not about the results, it's about the process. How do you achieve it and do what you do, and do what you do to the highest of your level.

Q. Your last game here was probably the most dominant period, the first period of that game was probably the most dominant period you've had in this entire series. What about your forecheck in that period could you maybe try to replicate tonight that worked so well?
COACH CARLYLE: I think, again, it's about work ethic and it's about making sure that we put pucks into areas that their goaltender doesn't have a chance to play. And that's what -- in our review, the overall game, the third period was our nemesis as far as the first five times we dumped the puck in, he had an opportunity to make a play on it. And we didn't establish that forecheck that we had in previous two periods.

So, again, it's adjustments that have to take place, and we have some things that we like to do through the neutral ice that will help us do that. And I'm sure they're going to look upon their neutral ice as one of their strengths to push us to the outside and not have effective dumps.

Q. I think your bench in that game was pointing out one instance in which he was playing the puck in the place where he shouldn't have. Is that something that you've alerted the officials to?
COACH CARLYLE: Well, it's quite clear that he got away with playing the puck out of the trapezoid, which should have been a two-minute minor. It's an automatic call. So we can't change what happened. It happened in the last game, and everybody in the world knows what went on. But we move on.

These are the things that are on our list. That's adversity, because you don't get the call, it can't affect your continuation of play. You move on. The next one is the most important play, and that's the approach we have to take.

Q. What has allowed Montour to develop so quickly? I thought he played a great Game 5. What's allowed him to mature so quickly?
COACH CARLYLE: Coaching. (Laughter) I'm not going to take credit for it because it's Dallas Eakins obviously that's helped him shape his career. He's a young kid that we always knew that he could play in the NHL. We always believed that he could play. It's just a matter of when. And we want him, as we've stated before, the development of these young defensemen and young players into your lineup, we base it on a 15-year career, not a five-year career.

And there's some things that he has to still continue to improve on, but he's a very noticeable player on the ice surface. So it's a feather, as I stated, in Dallas Eakins and our minor league team in San Diego -- Marty Wilford, he coaches the defense -- that they've helped develop this young man into an NHL defenseman.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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