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NHL EASTERN CONFERENCE FINAL: PENGUINS VS SENATORSMay 25, 2017Chris KunitzMatt MurrayPittsburgh, Pennsylvania - Postgame Pittsburgh-3, Ottawa-2 Q. Chris, first of all, have you checked your phone yet? Have you heard from Talbot at any point? If not, when do you expect to? What did you see on the goal from your shot? Did you get much on it? Did it clip Pageau? What did you see there? CHRIS KUNITZ: I was just trying to get in the soft spot. The puck fluttered off my stick. I don't know if it touched him or just kept going right by. Looked like there was good screen on the goalie, looked like he fell down. Just found its way into the net. Sometimes you get lucky when you put one in the net. Q. You and Sid and Sheary seemed to have something going tonight whenever you were together. What do you think was responsible for that? CHRIS KUNITZ: I mean, Coach is trying all different kinds of combinations. We had a couple of good shifts with Cully. He kept throwing Sid in between back and forth. It's just something he must have felt comfortable going with. Yeah, we did a lot of good things. We didn't spend much time in our own end. Any time you can apply pressure against the other team, Coach is going to put you back out there. We had to earn every shift, and we found a way to do that. Q. Chris, approximately how many times have you done that with Sid over the years? You said you basically knew you'd be calling for it there? CHRIS KUNITZ: Yeah, Sheary did a really good job of bringing it up the wall and walking the blue. Sid was maybe coming right over the bench. When he drives it deep, everyone gets scared. Sid's got great vision and put it right there. Just found a way to put it on net and got lucky. Q. Chris, you've gone into the playoffs before as the defending champ. Did you find anything uniquely challenging about this run to the final this year? CHRIS KUNITZ: I mean, just the competition. I mean, it doesn't matter who you're playing. It's tough to overcome them -- or sustain maybe that pressure that we had last year. It felt like we were in more of a flow. This year it's been back and forth. It's been tough. We've had great individual performances. We had great goaltending. It's something every night. We haven't dominated the play that maybe we wanted to. Maybe we've done a better job these last couple of games. But it's something we're going to have to get better at playing a 60-minute game if we're going to have a chance to beat Nashville. Q. Matt, I know you're playing against the other team's shooters, but how aware are you that, when a guy like Craig Anderson is playing as well as he is, there's just not going to be a lot of room for error in those situations? Because it seemed like certainly the last two games that's as close as we can describe goaltending tools. MATT MURRAY: Yeah, he was unbelievable. I thought that whole team was playing inspired hockey. Yeah, definitely knew it was going to be tough to get any by him, but at the end of the day, it doesn't change my job. I just tried to hold the team in it as long as I could. I always have confidence in the team in front of me that they're going to score goals. Just trying to do my job on the back end, and we were able to get it done today. Q. Chris, you've obviously been to the Finals a few times before, but I'm just wondering is there anything that set in that made this trip extra special for you? CHRIS KUNITZ: For sure. Never knowing if you're going to get another chance to come this far. You never know if you're going to play on this ice again with this team. So you've got to make sure you make that last as long as you can. It's not a lot of fun thinking about the future when you want to be here and you want to be playing with your teammates. Sometimes it comes down to luck for a goal going against you and your season's over. So I'm happy that it's not over for us yet. We've got another challenge in front of us and another chance to win another Cup. Q. Can you describe what it's like to score the double overtime winner in Game 7? What were your emotions like? CHRIS KUNITZ: Yeah, just excitement. I don't think it really matters who scores. I think we're all just happy that the game's ended, and we're on the top side of it, that we get to go play for another Stanley Cup. You know, I think it's something that it takes work by everybody on the ice to be able to score a goal or make a play. Could be a different point in the game that opens up ice for you. It's something that our whole team is part of. Without some of the big saves that Murr's making, it's not possible for us to go out there, guys blocking shots on penalty kills. It's nice to be able to contribute, but we all know it's a team game, and we're all going to have to pull our own weight at some point. Q. Matt, you've only been back four games after missing for six weeks. Do you feel like you're pretty much back to where you were before the injury? MATT MURRAY: Yeah, I think so. I think it was definitely a slow process. It's tough when you're not able to skate and you're not able to spend the days with your teammates when you're hurt. So I definitely just tried to focus on my rehab. I think I came back stronger than before. That's kind of all I could focus on. Just tried to -- when I got back in there, I just tried to jump in and not kind of dip your toes in the water because then you're going to get beat. So just tried to jump in and be confident and just try and play my game. Q. Chris, there was a time not too long ago when a team like this team could never win Game 7s in Pittsburgh, it could never win overtime games in this building. The last two years, this group seems completely different. What changed? CHRIS KUNITZ: I don't know. It's something that you're going to go out and try to perform your best every single night. You know, it could be maturity. It could be the way that we've come together, the way that the team has been changed. We've obviously had Bryan Rust score big goals for us the last year and a half, the last two seasons in the playoffs. In Game 7s, we've had Matt Cullen go 8-0 in Game 7s. It's just a different makeup of how you feel in the locker room and how close you are as a team and how much chemistry and how much fun it is to come to the rink every day. These last two years have been quite the ride. We'll try to do it for another two more weeks and try to come up with another win. Q. Matt, they had very few shots on goal in the overtime periods. What was just the mental process like? Was it more difficult than usual staying focused with the pressure building like that? MATT MURRAY: I don't know if it's more difficult. It's just different. You go long periods without a shot. I think it spoke to how well we were playing honestly. We were dominating, I think, all night and really, for the most part, during this series. I don't know if I'd say it's more difficult. It's just different. You've just got to be ready at all times, and that's what I tried to do. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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