NHL STANLEY CUP FINALS: HURRICANES v RED WINGS

June 10, 2002

Paul Maurice

COACH MAURICE: Probably equally because at this point we have to. We can't run guys 28 minutes. We don't have them to do that. The guys that play ahead of them play hard minutes. There's hard miles on those guys and it's not -- we have never had that defensemen that plays 40 minutes and barely sweats, Vasicek and Svoboda we had a difficult time through our top 12, generating anything down low, and I don't know what those two guys had -- whether they were less effective. It was hard to tell because you would then have to come up with a grouping that was more effective to make that a logical statement. I am not sure we could.

COACH MAURICE: We'll deal with that tomorrow. Yes, I have seen it.

COACH MAURICE: Well, I mean two parts of it. They make excellent plays, excellent outlet plays, they move that puck so well from their back end that -- part of that is the guys receiving the pass can knock it down, hang on to it. They play really a good five-man defensive game. So overlooked because it's far more fun for everybody to look at the goals that are scored and the people that put the puck in the net, but their defensive game is outstanding and because they skate so well into it that almost all the people would not be able to lose the picks, the holds which they execute far more effectively than we do.

COACH MAURICE: We'll look at it. I am not sure that that will change our offensive fortunes but we're certainly going to look at that the next two days. Brind'Amour and Cole have been an effective pairing and Svoboda and Vasicek have been an effective pairing. That's how those guys sort out. Before we elevate people off our fourth line, this is not an effort problem because Kevyn Adams works hard and tries harder than anybody on the face of the earth. One guy scores a lot of goals and the other guy works as hard as he can.

COACH MAURICE: He's fine. I don't know how many teeth he has got left. But he's fine.

COACH MAURICE: We have gone, I guess, 6 and a half, 7 and a half periods without a goal. Anything is possible at that point. But you know, they see -- they see Ronnie going to see the top two sets of "D" all night long. Sami has obviously struggled to get his shots off to the net and to be a physical force down low, not a big part of his game. It's been difficult for him. And it showed.

COACH MAURICE: Can't hurt us. We didn't have a lot of things going tonight. That was pretty obvious,. Too far into the season to consider it a problem. Just had a hard time getting things done. They played their best game of the series and we were pushing at times where we shouldn't have been and that opened up our game. That's a dangerous thing to do against Detroit. Yeah, the two days are important, I think, for us right now. We need a day to reset the emotional button and then we need a day to look at some different options that we have technically. Just so difficult for our team to move through the neutral zone right now and to get it in deep with any kind of forecheck pressure. We had a heck of a time doing that tonight. And get away from not scoring, get away from that tension that's built into your team when you go stretches of not scoring, we need a little time.

COACH MAURICE: I doubt that you can separate the two ever and where that line is drawn, I don't know. I know they played very well. They were quick, really quick. For me, it doesn't have to be pretty obvious, and we, into the third down is not a bad place at that point in time. We opened our game. I don't want to say open it. We did offensive things or tried to create offense because it wasn't coming at all for us, and got out of position doing that. You just can't do that against Detroit. Saw the frustration, I thought I saw the frustration the last two games especially against Colorado because they had the guns there that have to create that and when they couldn't, the frustration level builds and things like that happen. Like I said we have got an awful lot of hockey there without putting one past them, not the goalie, just getting it in, generating that -- the things that we were able to do in the first three series have been difficult to do and we have got to almost mentally get back to the point of accepting that and that just grind and grind and grind and position yourself and grind some more. I thought we got away from that tonight.