	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

NHL STANLEY CUP FINAL: PREDATORS VS PENGUINS

June 11, 2017

Peter Laviolette

Nashville, Tennessee - Postgame

Q. Peter, I know at a time like this it's really hard to have any sort of perspective as you're processing what just happened, but once this sort of settles a little bit, what do you want your group to take out of the experience that you gained throughout the Stanley Cup playoff run?
PETER LAVIOLETTE: Well, first I'd like to congratulate the Pittsburgh organization. Back-to-back championships for them, so a job well done. They're a very good hockey team, and I think they proved that by being here in the Finals again.

As far as reflection goes, to be honest, we haven't really gotten to that. We just left the game. Our guys' hearts are heavy right now. Everybody's is. We'll move forward and we'll talk about different things, but I'm proud of the guys and the way that they played. I'm proud of the team that we became, and I'm proud of the way they responded after Game 5 in the game tonight.

We hate the result, but our guys gave a pretty good effort, and it's difficult for us right now because our sights were set on winning the championship, like anybody would be when you get to this point, and for that, it's disappointing.

Q. Some of the guys talked about this pain that you're feeling right now being a motivation that you want to embrace maybe for next season. Is that a similar feeling for you?
PETER LAVIOLETTE: Yeah, again, that's probably a conversation for a different day, and when you talk about building off of something, you don't get to this point without investing an awful lot, as individuals, as a team, and your personal life. There's a big investment that goes to getting to this point, so to just move forward and talk about what can be in the future is difficult when you're still sitting in the game and in the present of today. It's just a tough loss for our guys. They played well tonight, and it's difficult to think that we're not playing tomorrow.

Q. Is it tougher considering the disallowed goal and then the way they scored at the end of the game?
PETER LAVIOLETTE: I mean, it's -- yeah, it's more difficult.

Q. Can you tell us anything about what Ellis was playing through tonight? Seemed like a very gutsy effort for him tonight.
PETER LAVIOLETTE: Yeah, I thought he was awesome. It was a really courageous effort by him to go out and play the minutes he did against the opponents that he had to play against and the matchup that he had. But that's Ryan Ellis right there. You know, he's banged up pretty bad. A lot of guys are banged up. But his injury was pretty serious, and it was a gutsy performance by him. I thought he played really well.

I think we'll get into that, and we'll go through things on a player update and let out some information of some things that maybe were happening.

Q. No goals in the last two games for your team. Can you talk a little bit about if that's Matt Murray or what it was that prevented you guys from scoring in the last two games?
PETER LAVIOLETTE: Well, you're talking about two different games, I feel. Game 5, we weren't good. We're all admitting that. There's no sugarcoating it. We needed to be better.

I thought we were a lot better tonight. Tonight we probably had 25 chances, a lot of them were good chances. We hit the post three times and it didn't go for us. He did play well in that. I thought their goaltender was very good, and didn't drop. But it's hard to lump Game 5 in with Game 6. Game 5, we didn't generate much. Tonight we did generate a lot, they just didn't go in.

Q. You said you were proud of what this team became over this run; what did this team become the last couple months?
PETER LAVIOLETTE: Well, I've told you guys from early on that when we got together, I think we were figuring things out as a group, and I remember somebody asking me back in October about our team, and my response was, we don't have to win a championship in October. What we need to do is we need to build and grow together as a team. We need to get stronger. We need to work on our game on the ice. We need to figure out where everybody fits in on this team, and we need to come together and continue to get better as the season goes on, and I think that's exactly what we did. We played our best hockey at the end of the year. We played excellent through the Playoffs.

If we were going to take one game and only one game back, it would be Game 5 in Pittsburgh where I don't think we played very good. They played a strong game, I don't think we played a very strong game. So outside of a playoff series that goes over 20 games, you have one game that you don't like, so that talks more to the strength of our team and how we played down the stretch in the regular season and how we played through the Playoffs. So there was definitely growth to our team, from where we started into who we became and who we are. Again, I'm really proud of the guys.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297