NHL EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: MAPLE LEAFS v HURRICANES

May 25, 2002

Rick Ley

COACH LEY: Part of that, but it was also looking for a match up. They have been pretty comfortable in this series and I was hoping that with a match up, we could keep everybody in the game. Keep you thinking, keep you sharp, mentally.

COACH LEY: Well, some of the amazing things about penalties is there's a two-referee system with one guy working one end and one guy working the other ends and what is a penalty in one end is not a penalty in the other end and vice versa. It's hard to figure out what they are going to call. I'm not trying to criticize the officials, that's just the way it is. I think if you watch the other series on TV, you see the same types of things happening. Each referee has his own ego and his own style of call. Sometimes, it gets frustrating for the players and obviously for the coaches.

COACH LEY: That's hard to say. I think -- no. We are similar in one way, in our thinking, structural-wise, moving the puck, defensemen and things like that. But we are different people in other ways. Through the course of the year, I might be a little harder than Pat. If I was ever criticized, which I was as a coach, a lot of them said I was too hard.

COACH LEY: No. They said I was too hard, and that was not the case; I pushed them. I pushed them to be the best that they could be, and trying to make them accountable. I'm not saying Pat does not make them accountable or push them, but we do in different ways.

COACH LEY: Running the bench is a follow-up to how you coach your team during the year. So that's a real hard question to answer because it's a process. It's a long, long process. It's not just a short one. We are different in ways of handling the bench. Obviously, Pat is very good at it. He's won a lot of hockey games.

COACH LEY: We needed him in the third period and he stood on his head.

COACH LEY: Generally your best penalty killer is your goaltender and CuJo was sharp. Plus, I thought we did a pretty good job. We were moving good and moved into the box when we needed to, moved into the triangle when we needed to. The guys I thought were sharp and focused. The penalties in the second period, I think, kind of took us out of it, because we were playing pretty good up to then and then it changed the game around for us, because then we are were in the defensive mode the rest of the way.

COACH LEY: We might have tripped over a couple of times, but I thought the guys competed hard per man, and they worked at the process. As I said to Keith about halfway through the second period or the third period, I said, "I think we are going to be fine because we are worrying about our end."

COACH LEY: Well, they had played in the Ottawa series and they played pretty well together. We thought with Nathan coming in, put Nathan with a veteran that's been around for a while, and put them back together and hope that the chemistry would come back that they had from the previous series.

COACH LEY: Well, we started better than we have in the previous games. Even though we won a couple of the opening faceoffs in the first four games, you still spent up to the first 35 seconds of each game in our end. Tonight we didn't do that, we were in their end and it was a little different, we have to be better in our end, and to be better in our end, we have to spend more time in theirs.

COACH LEY: It wasn't by design, no. I think the penalties, disrupted our flow and got us into a -- because obviously when you are killing the penalty, you are thinking nothing but defense. Occasionally, you might get a jump-start for a chance the other way, we didn't seem to come out of that. It just seemed that after that, we were content. Plus, sometimes when you're trying to match lines up, it takes away from your attack because when you come up with the puck, you know they are going to chip it in and put it in, so you make a line change. So sometimes you pass up some opportunities to attack, and I think our mind set just got totally on protecting the lead.

COACH LEY: I said we can't think about the three; now we can't think about two. We have got to think about one again. We are one closer.