NHL WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: AVALANCHE v RED WINGS

May 18, 2002

Darren McCarty

DARREN McCARTY: It's my kid's birthday. He put a lot of pressure on me, he wanted a goal. He'll siphon through them and pick out the ones he wants.

DARREN McCARTY: You all read the Bible. You heard the Apocalypse look out. No, you know, I guess when you only score five during the regular seasons and haven't scored any in the playoffs, you're due. Cheli made a good play on the one and Maltby on the next one. I tried to shoot it hard and get it into the screen. Sometimes it finds a spot. The second one it's a 2-on-1 with Maltby and I made my mind up to shoot early. Luckily this time it worked. On the third one it was just the rebound, and just something you try to practice, you just got to try to flip it upstairs. Why it happened, who knows. The bottom line is we won. We've always heard about this room, we've just never been in it. It's nice. Thanks for having me.

DARREN McCARTY: The bottom line is we won the game. No matter what -- it's my first hat trick. I scored one in exhibition before so it's huge. The bottom line is you take the win first. I think the time, it comes. You chip many. You talk about all the Hall of Famers and the guys we have on our team. What makes us successful is different guys doing different things. You try to chip in different ways and tonight I guess it was my turn to chip in on the score sheet. Other than that, you still have to play the game and try to create chances. And tonight I guess it was just my night. If it wants to happen again, I'm not going to argue. The bottom line is we won. You've got to understand. The hype everyone makes about this rivalry, this is an unbelievable team we play. We know it. I've got so much respect for them through the history and the guys they have. I mean, this is hockey at its finest. Just to be out there and competing and playing against the world class players that we are, it's great. But that's one game. It's nice to have won it, but it's one game. We know from history that we got to keep playing hard and we've got to win four. That's the bottom line.

DARREN McCARTY: Like I said before, I've always heard about this place and guys have always talked about it, but you win hockey games. I mean, I think I said it already what makes us successful is we've got the ten or eleven Hall of Fame guys that get it done each night. But when they don't get it done, we have different guys to step up. Tonight was my night. It's about time. It's nice to have it happen. But it's one game. I'll cherish this for a couple days, but Monday is a new day. We got to get back at it and do the things I do to make my lines successful.

DARREN McCARTY: Well, that was -- you know, everybody obviously knows about that night and the extracurricular stuff that happened, but the bottom line we've always said is the big turnaround in that game wasn't the fights, it was coming back from two goals in the third period and winning in overtime, but just to beat them. We hadn't beat them all year. That really helped us. I guess you overcome that hurdle when you haven't beat those guys in the regular season and you were able to carry it over in the playoffs. Right now, they're the Stanley Cup champions. I think in the '90s it's one of the two or three teams we measure ourselves against to see where we're at. They've -- when we've been successful we have had to go through them in the past. I think we measure up against them as evenly as anybody and have for the past five or six years, and, you know, this is where you really find out a lot about yourself and your team. Just because of the history and the guys, the Footes, and the Roys and the Sakics and the Forsbergs, the guys who have been since '96, I got a lot of respect for those guys. It's a battle each time you're out there, but this is what you live for, the playoff games, the Western Conference Finals, playing the Colorado Avalanche. Doesn't get much better than this.

DARREN McCARTY: Growing up so close and, you know, I have been to Olympia before it was torn down and in the '80s, there was a couple thousand people in the stands. I was one of them. It was always a dream to play them. I'm as close to a hometown guy on this team as there is. It fulfilled my dream, as most of the guys in the NHL, to play for the hometown team. It's much more special. We've won Cups before, and this is home to me, and I guess it's just extra special to do it here. But, you know, we've had a quest since training camp started, and that was to win the Cup. Other than that, it's disappointing season. When you win a couple Cups, you know what the feeling is like and it's such a disappointment when you don't. We have one goal and we're trying to do it, and we've got to go through the Avs to do it.

DARREN McCARTY: If you go to hit Rob Blake and he knows you're coming you're in trouble because he absolutely knocked the wind out of me. That's not a good feeling, but, you know, you come up. He's a big competitor, and you come up and hit him all the time. And he just got -- I tried to hit him, and he got me square. Those things happen, you know, I can't really say. It's not family appropriate, but more when -- it was just nice. The guys were happy. I give credit, Joey put a hoodoo hex on my stick before the game and Luc actually picked it out. You listen to them and sometimes things go right. It worked out tonight.

DARREN McCARTY: No, I didn't really pay attention to that. We're worried about how we're playing. You know, they're such an experienced team; they're the title holders. You've seen them play two tough series, going into the seventh game first series, winning that game, coming from down 3 to 2 to win the series. They don't get rattled. They do what they have to do. You're looking at arguably the greatest goalie in the game to play their net. You win championships by knowing how to deal with it. They come out and play the way they want to play. Obviously, if you have a choice of playing two seven-games series and getting right into the next series, you choose having the week off. We're happy to have this. You've got to play 60 minutes against this team, or you're not going to win. Thanks for having me.