NHL STANLEY CUP FINALS: MIGHTY DUCKS v DEVILS

May 27, 2003

Jean-Sebastien Giguere

J.S. GIGUERE: Not at all. I felt pretty good out there. I saw the puck pretty well. My legs were great. I thought they just played well. They played better than we did.

J.S. GIGUERE: It was nothing for me to control. Whatever else happens I can't control it. I try to give my team a chance to win. That's the only thing I can do.

J.S. GIGUERE: The first goal Friesen did a great job being patient. I went down a little too early on him. He picked a corner there. I thought that was a pretty nice move by him.

J.S. GIGUERE: On the first shot I had, I thought I had the rebound on me. I didn't see it bounce back to the other guy's stick. There was kind of a 2-on-1 in front, so there was not much I could do after that.

J.S. GIGUERE: Yeah, this is over with right now, and the next game is the biggest game of the year.

J.S. GIGUERE: We're in this to learn, to get better. This is adversity. We're going to see how we're going to answer back. We all have to play better. It's going to be a great challenge for us.

J.S. GIGUERE: The second period was their best period. They came out really jumping. They were all over us in the second, and it probably was their best period they played tonight.

J.S. GIGUERE: We've got to use our speed better, and then we've got to shoot the puck more to create a little more traffic in front of the net. Obviously, he's a great goaltender. He's going to stop everything he sees. We've got to create traffic and do what we do. That's how we have been successful this year; do what we can do. That's all we can do.

J.S. GIGUERE: They're a great team, a lot of experience, they have been there before. They know what it takes to win. I wasn't surprised. I was expecting them to come out hard, and that's what they did.

J.S. GIGUERE: It's pretty sad. Patrick is obviously a great goaltender, the best that ever played the game, if you ask me. At some point, everybody has to move on. I'm not sure what his decision is, but I know there is not much we can do.

He made his decision, and we've got to respect that.

J.S. GIGUERE: The time off had nothing to do with the defeat. I thought they played better than we did. That's all it was.

J.S. GIGUERE: They're a good team. I don't think we played our game. If we want to have a chance to be successful, we've got to do what we do. Tonight we didn't do that. The next game, we've got to bounce back and see what we're made of.

J.S. GIGUERE: It's unusual, except everybody has to go through that at some point in their life. We're all in this to learn. I think tonight we're all better players and a better team.

J.S. GIGUERE: This is just one game, and I think maybe guys were a little bit nervous. I'm not sure what it was. They played well. I think the Devils really did well. They outplayed and outskated us. Next game, we need to match their intensity if we want to win.

J.S. GIGUERE: Maybe. They've got a lot of experience obviously. They know what it takes to win. This is, for a lot of us, a first experience. Like I say, we're better than we were after tonight's game. Tomorrow, the next game should be better by us. We should be more excited. We should be better. I'm looking forward to the next game.

J.S. GIGUERE: Yeah, he did a good job. I should have remembered what he did there. He used to score on me in practice all the time like that. I thought Jeff had a great game tonight, a lot of speed, a lot of emotion. His line, they were all over us, and you've got to give them credit. Next game we will be ready to stop him.

J.S. GIGUERE: Yeah, he made a good move holding onto the puck a second and move a foot to his left and he had an open space to score.

J.S. GIGUERE: We should be. There is no excuses to not show up tonight. I mean, this is the biggest series of our life. Nobody knows when is the next time we're going to be in the Finals. We need to show up. There is two weeks left in the season. We don't want to save energy. We've got to keep it out there and put our cards on the table and see what's going to happen.