NHL WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: WILD v MIGHTY DUCKS

May 10, 2003

Jacques Lemaire

COACH LEMAIRE: We lost some other games. You know, I don't think we have to look at it like that. We have to look that we played hard. We had good chances. Their goaltender was really good, as he was in the past series. He beat a lot of better shooters than maybe we have, but we got to find a way to score against him. If we look at the game closely there, we made one mistake in the whole game. The rest of the chances they created, either by winning face-offs or making quick plays in our end, which they didn't have a lot, and we made one mistake in that second overtime, which gave them the, I would say -- I would say two mistakes on that play that gave them the win, so that's what I'm looking at. You know, it's pretty good for a team like us, because this is a good team. The other side, if you look at the teams they beat, they had to play great hockey and that's what they're doing. They're playing great hockey with what they're doing on the ice. They're in good position. They skate. It was an exciting game there. It was getting more exciting as the game went on.

COACH LEMAIRE: Well, there was a bouncing puck on the board from the hash marks to the blue line, and we had the center man that wanted to stand up on it, and the defenseman, and they hit the puck in the air by the two guys, nobody backed each other up, and then they came back two-on-one, and when we get a two-on-one, usually we try to get the shot from the side, now we're moving on the side, keep the main lane open, so the guy, it was easy for him to make the play towards the front of the net, and puts it in.

COACH LEMAIRE: I wanted to get in his pants so he doesn't get the shot. I know the way he shoots the puck, so I don't want this guy to shoot.

COACH LEMAIRE: Because the other guy got injured a little bit towards the end of the last game, and I didn't want to take any chances on this one so he could aggravate it.

COACH LEMAIRE: I don't think we were tight, not at all. I thought we were, you know, as the year goes on, we're more and more aggressive around the opponent's net, and we were tonight. You know, a lot of times rebounding came to us, but we were there. We got some shots. We got some screen shots that were stopped. Like I said, we couldn't get a goal at any time here.