NHL STANLEY CUP FINALS: HURRICANES v RED WINGS

June 8, 2002

Paul Maurice

COACH MAURICE: Well, I thought there were times where we passed up some shots. There's not really a lot. I don't think how we're shooting the puck is high on the priority list of things that we need to do better. There were some strong areas in forecheck positioning that we got away from, the manner in which we do it and a lot of them to come out on a leisure (inaudible) that we would have liked. For us, and maybe for all teams, but for us, all year rarely is it an adjustment getting away from something that we have done consistently. It's more of a readjustment, back to what we should be doing better. There's not a lot of changes, major changes that you can make to your game after, I don't know, 110, 111, whatever we have played over the course of the season to -- you know, Rod Brind'Amour had mentioned that in the meeting prior to the start of the series. When Philly played Detroit, they lost in four. I mean, he felt that they got caught in a lot of adjustments after Game 1 because it didn't go well. We just need to make adjustments back to original form and do those things better.

COACH MAURICE: I think when you do things simply, you do things better; I think your true natural talents come out. You do things quicker, you skate quicker. I think because they are on the road they do things more simply through the neutral zone and when they get the puck. With every team, at home, there's more of a -- there's a greater push to put on a show, whether that's the right way to say it or not. Even for us, we struggled through those powerplays on the road. It doesn't affect you in the same manner as it does at home. And at home you try to do more, and do more always. And on the road they try to do less, but their skill level comes out, I think, better when you play a simpler game.

COACH MAURICE: I didn't think being nervous was a bad thing, first of all. I think those jitters and that jump are a good thing. The crowd here in the Playoffs has been a big advantage for us. And the only way that it won't be is if we get out of our game to finish more hits, to show more jump, to try fancier plays, we have been pretty good at not doing that to this point. And we have used that home ice as an advantage because I think it gives you that extra half step; that, in our game, is usually the difference between us playing very well and not.

COACH MAURICE: We talked about the two penalties we took in the first period after the whistle, but there's some frustration there. We expected to win Game 2 after Game 1; not because we won Game 1, but we went into the game expecting to win. But even before it goes to 2-1, they were coming at us pretty good. We were having a hard time generating some things. That's going to generate frustration on any team. I didn't think it boiled over. I didn't think we got out of position. I don't think I can say it's in the penalties; they weren't blatant frustration penalties. We took the two after the whistle in the first period, weren't very happy about that, but I didn't feel it too much. Anymore -- like some of it is good. You don't want to completely be out on the ice, not showing any emotion. You got to keep some of that in your game. I didn't -- from the bench the feel is not bad. But we talked about some of the things that happened, more for our hockey club. I think a lot of the frustration changes position first, the first thing that goes when your team gets frustrated is it runs different routes on everything it does, it jumps down when it shouldn't, it lays back when it shouldn't; it gets out of position and I think we got a little out of position.

COACH MAURICE: I think it's true for some teams. But not necessarily them, because I am not sure that they are particularly concerned about matchups at home either. In relative terms to other teams that we have seen play, even in the Western Conference just watching the games, there are some matchups that they like to get and they look for but because they are confident as they are in all four lines as they should be in their defense, they don't match nearly as strongly as some teams do. So they never get that effect and that happens at home. And we are going to guard against that as well. You have got to be careful. I think it was really clear in Game 5, Game 4 or 5 of the Toronto series. The first period, both teams -- we were matching so hard at one point there was 20 guys on the ice, then one change there was 3. Everybody was just running to the benches back and forth the. We'll be careful of staying away from that as well.

COACH MAURICE: They have got very faceoff guys. We would like to see some of the faceoffs even out a little bit in terms of positioning when the puck is dropped. But they have got very good faceoff men.

COACH MAURICE: It was tough on him at first because he's got to rest. So the first two weeks of that he's not really -- we're not even travelling with him. We didn't start bringing him with us on the road until we knew he could skate because he did better - you know, it was all hand rehab stuff. We set out probably a pretty clear course after his first X-ray that showed the bone was healing properly and there would be a chance that he would come back while we were playing, we set out a pretty clear game plan for him to get himself back to form and he's done a really good job pushing self appropriately getting himself back ready. It's difficult for any player that suffers an injury. Kevin McCarthy is a good example of that, he broke his ankle on the last optional skate before Vancouver, he was captain of the team, broke his ankle last optional skate before Vancouver went on the run to the Finals to Game 7. He's got some experience in dealing with that.

COACH MAURICE: Well, the Colorado series I started to go through and write down the combinations just after my third pen, there I just said, hey, this is costing me too much money. There's a lot more of a method to it necessarily than it looks, I think. I am not smart enough to figure it out but I am sure it's there. But so we approach it a little differently regardless of the combination, this could be good players coming on the ice, there's never that, oh, we finally got them, they have got five guys that can't play. We're not looking for that. We're not waiting for that to happen. So the matchups are probably at this point, from my point of view, quite a bit looser than you may expect in a Stanley Cup Final. There are certain players we feel that we'd like to have out on the ice but again, I am going to be very careful about pulling people off the ice at key times. You know, what, a lot of matchup is how well you play. Our game tying goal in the second -- at the end of the second period, O'Neill's game tying goal, we had Vasicek out with Yzerman line in the offensive zone which is something that we would leave and they played their 30-second shift, we got two rotations through and then scored a goal off it. If the Hurricanes score then the line matchup was good for us. If we don't, it was good for them.

COACH MAURICE: No, we have, at least the coaching staff have always been -- not you personally, but the general assertion that that's the fourth line and you can fit that line pretty nicely and probably a little further up the pecking order on just about every team in the NHL. They play a great game as a group. That's their strength which is just as strong as having a line that had, you know, a Hall-of-Famer on it, it's a good line. I don't view it as a fourth line. We are very aware when it's on the ice and in some ways they are more difficult to play at times than their other line. They may not score goals or get talked about in the same vein - I think they like that, I think they enjoy that role and they certainly play at a very, very high tempo. We have a tremendous amount of respect for that line.

COACH MAURICE: I was happiest when the clock -- penalty clock kicked to zero and we hadn't given one up. I think -- there was not a lot of really good things to be taken from that. We had a problem with our entry; problem containing it in the offensive zone; then we had a quickness problem whenever we pulled it off. When you go back and look at the goals that Colorado scored against Detroit on their powerplay, one or two things happens, either there's some Forsberg/Sakic skill out there that there are not a lot of people in NHL that have, so you don't try and use those poweplays and the other thing is launching it from the back end and getting it to the net. We hadn't done that when we should have. We have had opportunities to put it to the net, we have not done that, we need to do that better. Our powerplay all year overall has been very good but it suffered those -- the one or two really poor stretches in a game then rebounded and scored some unusual goals. Playing the powerplay even against Detroit is not an advantage for our team.

COACH MAURICE: Boy, I tell you what, I mean, you have been around our team now for a few days anyway. There's very little change in emotion, which is a good thing. Don't make the mistake of thinking that there's no emotion. But there's very little change in our team. That's why I am not going to spend a lot time worrying about toning those emotions down before the game. We encourage that, it's not a bad thing. We want them to have that little extra jump, we want to make sure that we run in our positions, that's critical after game 2, I really felt that there were two areas on our forecheck and in our neutral zone that we were running out of position just out of jump; just trying to make things happen that didn't need to happen in a 1-1 hockey game.

COACH MAURICE: It's really tough to get an indication of our ice from the morning skate based on the temperature outside. Our ice has not been poor over the course of the season. But in this building it's the first time that we have run ice in June so -- it looked to me no different today than it would have had at any point during the season so there was no major change in it. We will have to wait and see how it sorts itself out tonight.