NHL STANLEY CUP FINALS: RED WINGS v FLYERS

June 1, 1997

John LeClair

Q. John, after viewing the film, do you see anything that you will do differently, offensewise, in Game 2.

JOHN LeCLAIR: I think there is a lot of things that we can do to create offense. As I kind of mentioned last night, I think a lot of it starts with just us moving our feet. I start skating -- when you are skating you are going to be able to create a lot more. I don't think we get to the puck -- we got the puck to the net as much as we would like to. We didn't have a lot of great scoring chances as we had in the past.

JOHN LeCLAIR: I think we were real tentative in the first period. I think that is a lot of -- where the non-skating came from. We weren't jumping on a lot of loose pucks. We played like a team that was just kind of, you know, in awe of the whole situation in the first period. It kind of put us in a hole.

JOHN LeCLAIR: They were filling the lines. I mean, you know, consistently making rink-wide passes back and forth. It is going to be hard to do against any team. It just happened on that play that there were lines there to get the puck through. You know, I don't think that is something that we want to practice either. It is kind of dangerous to keep throwing the puck rink-wide. We want to make sure pass -- we want to have the guys who have the puck get support from people and have them close to them.

JOHN LeCLAIR: It doesn't make it any easier to understand why those things happen. As a team and as a player it is frustrating to come out. You want to start the series off, obviously, on a good note and for us to come out flat I think it was very frustrating and disappointing for us.

JOHN LeCLAIR: It is not my decision, but, you know, my opinion is, you know, they scored 2 -- 2 on 0, which you only see in practice. So, they had another 2 on 1. You know, we didn't give it actually a whole lot of help. I think, you know, we were down by 2 goals, but even in the third period Hexy made a bunch of big serves that could have made it a 3 goal game. So a lot of people kind of overlook that.

JOHN LeCLAIR: I think they have a little more legs than we do. They are a little quicker. But, I don't think that is the game that we want to get into. If you want to be successful as a team, you want to play your game, you want to win at your own game. You don't want to try to win at their game. It is important for us to use our size to slow them down so they can't get the speed generated like they did last night.

RON HEXTALL: I think they are behind us. I think we picked it up at times. It wasn't something that lingered all game. So, I think there won't be a question that we won't be ready to go on Tuesday.

JOHN LeCLAIR: Those aren't my decisions. I mean, I felt fresh last night. I don't think it was a fact of rustiness. I think it was -- maybe it was just a case of feeling the team out, trying to get different combinations against different players, see who plays against who, and who can work against who on the other team.

JOHN LeCLAIR: For us it is very important. We don't want to go to Detroit being down 2-0. It is not a good situation. I mean, they are a good club at home and we know that, so it is a big game for us. You can't put yourself too far in the hole anyway, especially with the start with 2 games.

JOHN LeCLAIR: I wasn't surprised with the way they can take a hit. I don't think we really hit them that much at all last night. I think what surprised me was they did a great job of holding up for each other and that wasn't allowing us to get our hits in.