NHL STANLEY CUP FINALS: HURRICANES v RED WINGS

June 6, 2002

Paul Maurice

COACH MAURICE: First stoppage of play after 14, 10 and 6. After 14, 10 and 6, not on, but after. I think I am right because it happened in Carolina this year at one point.

COACH MAURICE: That there may have been a mishap in the box, in the off-ice official booth. I am sure they will get that sorted out for next year.

COACH MAURICE: Yeah, we'll leave this game here, along with our powerplay. I have said this before, there are really no indicators because it changes by goal, by shift. We're in a good mood tonight? No, we're not. There's a lot of things that we know we need to do better, but really through two, with the exception of our powerplay, we're not upset with our game. It's tough sledding out there. There was not a lot of room for either team. There was not a lot of sharpness to the game. We obviously spent too much time in our end in the third, had too many penalties. But on the upside, there's room to get better. And it would be very difficult if that was our best game and had lost it. It wasn't, but we have a good history of bouncing back.

COACH MAURICE: We have a game plan. I am not sure that there's a blueprint to beating team. Their ability to change, their ability to become a different looking team at times, whether they get to be more physical on the offensive zone or they play more of a puck position game, they have the players to change their style. So there's no set plan that guarantees you success against the Detroit Red Wings. The other 29 coaches in the League have obviously, myself included, tried to come up with one, I think with 116 points gives you and idea how you can successful we have been.

COACH MAURICE: Yeah, we're working on it. It's a great line from a movie slap shot, yeah, yeah we're working on it. No. It has been a little different. I think both ways. I am not sitting here complaining about the referee-ing by any means. I think that's part of the learning process that you go through. You have got to get that feel early for what is going. We took two penalties after the whistle in the first period. We just can't take those regardless of whether they were good calls or not, you learn from the first one that there's going to be nothing allowed. Just can't take those penalties. We have to consider ourself fortunate to have given up as many powerplays as we have to this point, and fortunately how do I put this, sometimes the ice isn't in favor of penalty killers, maybe, is that a nice way to put that? Get in trouble for that? It was a little rough sledding out there is I guess what I meant to say. I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings.

COACH MAURICE: No, we weren't playing for overtime at that point. We had a real tough time moving through the neutral zone but we only had about 4 opportunities to do that because we had so many defensive zone faceoffs, took the fourth line out of rotation, made things more difficult. Had no sustained pressure for about 6 minutes, that's in the end what cost us, you know, I thought through two, we really, when things aren't going in your powerplay you talk about it separating your 5 on 4 game from your 5 on 5. But we talked about not letting it affect our game, but I think maybe it did. You got your top-end guys out there, it is not happening for them. They feel it a little bit.

COACH MAURICE: You have excellent shoes.

COACH MAURICE: Maybe a reason for both teams. We won't use that as an excuse for our own, there are definitely times in the powerplay that it did cause some problems. I mean, it was obvious, I think regardless of what seat you had in the building tonight that there was not a lot of crispness. For most of you who have been so good to our team, you might allow us to use that as excuse as a skill factor but when you factor in Detroit who has some guys that can snap it around and they had some issues too, it was definitely, no question, a factor in the game.