NHL EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: MAPLE LEAFS v HURRICANES

May 23, 2002

Paul Maurice

COACH MAURICE: I don't have any thoughts about being 3-1. I'll have some tomorrow. It's hard to explain. For a coach, you play well, you're happy, and if you don't play well, you're not very happy. It was not our finest game. On the upside, (laughter), we won 3-0. Everybody in our organization has a piece of the winning, and Archie had a great, big, fat piece of that one tonight.

COACH MAURICE: I was concerned mostly about our team going into this game. When you go and you get that split at home and you come back and you split in here, then everybody expects it's very difficult to win two games in Toronto and you get it, you've accomplished part of the goal and you notice that now they are starting to feel that they can go and they did and they played a great game tonight. But I was concerned going in with some of the things about the game, and it turned out, I had a right to be.

COACH MAURICE: Yes, sir. (Smiles).

COACH MAURICE: We're all right with that. It's a good place to be. But that's not going to change. This is Toronto and they are the Maple Leafs. There's an awful lot of you in this room and I don't think you work for the same media outlet. That's not going to change. We're fine. We're certainly not offended.

COACH MAURICE: Well, there were the five or six times they came down the middle of the pipe off the trap; that really was not part of our game plan. I just felt that we had a little bit of a quickness issue and it did not get better. That's what I expect of our team, and we've always been able to do that. We've always gotten better. If we come out of the gate a little off, then we would find our legs. And it's not all that bad. Our penalty killing was outstanding. Archie was part of the penalty killing; so, that makes it even better. But our penalty killing was very good, we got some big blocked shots and some good battles, and I guess our power play wins the game. The game-winner, Sami Kapanen, if you're only going to score one, that's a good one to score. And Ron Francis's presence, finishes the game. So they were good things. But from my point of view, we've lost some games this year and in the playoffs where I walked off the bench and said, "That's fine. We did what we came to do tonight." And for our hockey team, the one strength that we've shown is it's learned as we've gone, has not always been good, has not always been easy. Tonight was very similar to Game 3 against New Jersey. The difference is, if I took out Archie after one in that game, and even if he had broken something in that game, he wasn't coming out of that. So this is all part of a learning process for our team.

COACH MAURICE: We've got a very good jumping board going into this next game, because we've got a fair amount of video to show and we've got an improvement to make. I'm as sure as you can be when you coach hockey; I'm confident that we will play better in the next game. That last sentence. That being all said, they played a great game. They played a great game. They were moving, finishing checks, throwing it at the net, banging, and they hit a hot goaltender. But they played a great game tonight, but they are going to have to play better to beat them the next game, that's for sure.

COACH MAURICE: You got that feeling going. He's like that. When he gets off to one of those, it's almost like he gets his teeth into it. He knows, early, that, "I'm on, I'm in that range."

COACH MAURICE: I would say that we are far less surprised than maybe everyone else, but, it still is very difficult to do. We got some outstanding performances in our two games here, our goaltender especially tonight. We had some guys play fairly well, don't get me wrong, I just was not in a great mood after. We played a pretty solid game and played well. I thought we played extremely well and did a lot of things that we didn't necessarily get credit for the other night, and that's fine. But it's a fairly confident group.

COACH MAURICE: He broke his lace. He was in the box and broke his lace. The rule is that you can substitute a player but he did not come back until the next whistle. I did not think he would be able to did that, so we had a minor discussion about it with the officials and then everything was fine.

COACH MAURICE: I don't think he was particularly happy. But I think that it wasn't out of the realm of possibility. When our goaltender is as long as he is, you know when that happens, there's the chance you may get pulled. You may not agree with it, but I think he knew and he felt that there was a possibility that those things could happen. But he also knew there was a chance to back in. He certainly worked at that level. When I took him out, he went and practiced the next week like a madman and was great in practice.