NHL STANLEY CUP FINALS: HURRICANES v RED WINGS

June 13, 2002

Paul Maurice

COACH MAURICE: Well, we have got a comfort level playing on the road developed over the course of the season and continued on through the Playoffs. We were a very good road team. We have not faced this situation of elimination yet, but our game is suited, as a lot of teams, to play at least as well, if not better, maybe a better game on the road than sometimes we even do at home.

COACH MAURICE: Well, you got a couple of different ways you can do it. You go in and be as positive as you possibly can. At the same time, you have lost three in a row and I think your players are a little more sophisticated than that, you are not just going to walk in and tell them everything is great, when it's not. So we try to do both - show them the areas we have to improve, the things that are costing us, the mistakes. Not so much the individual, but the team-wide, and some more consistent things that are working against us in these days. You have to show them something where you can make an improvement. You have to show them a way out, a way to change, a way to get better, a way to win. At the same time, you can't make that video session or meeting become -- take on a life of its own and become insurmountable. If their eyes, they have to believe that they can win and you have to keep fostering that attitude to make sure that that belief is still there.

COACH MAURICE: I was real happy because none of those guys were coming to the Eastern Conference. But you knew why they built this team in the manner in which they did. But we didn't spend a whole lot of time. We were always were looking at the guys that were coming East instead of the guys going West.

COACH MAURICE: I don't think anybody was out of sorts in doing that. Ronnie Francis is our obvious leader, but he's also a quiet man. He's not big on the long-winded speeches or screaming. So we have developed --there's are a lot of guys in that room that have a big impact on the way our team is lead and you know the Brind'Amours and Hill and Hedican and Wesley, those kind of guys, what you look for is some of the younger guys like Jeff O'Neill become more vocal nd that's, to me, a real good sign the guys who don't feel that weight of leadership over the course of year because we have so many older players but you want those guys stepping up and saying some things and guys like O'Neill have been more vocal. Not really as he been all Playoffs -- I think as his play as improved he's felt freer to have input in the locker room and he's done that.

COACH MAURICE: They have been there before and they took us through the situation that they found themselves in, and that's good to know. But we haven't got ourselves to the point that we're -- everybody gets their ten minutes in the middle of the room to try to pump the team up. That would be so out of the character for our club, and there was no sense getting excited two days ago or yesterday, we didn't have a game to play today. It's a little different situation. We want to get ourselves wound up for the game, but again I have said this 100 times to you people, that the strength of our team is not playing in wild abandon; it's playing our game better and a lot of that is a controlled situation.