NHL STANLEY CUP FINALS: RED WINGS v FLYERS

May 31, 1997

Terry Murray

Q. Detroit certainly appeared a lot quicker at the puck than your previous three opponents. What do you do in the next games to combat that?

TERRY MURRAY: Well, what I am going to do on the next game is something I have got a couple of days to think about. I don't think that the speed was an area that I am concerned about at all. What I was concerned about here, after this game tonight, is the way we played as a team. This is as poor as we have played in a month and a half. We didn't let our instincts flow. We measured ourselves to make a lot of the perfect plays, the cross-ice passes that we normally don't make were turned over and came right back at us. And, I think when you see mistakes happening, if you are going to turn the puck over and you are going one way and the other team opens and is able to get some of the plays going the other way, it clearly looks like one team is a heck of a lot faster - they are going the other way. So, the speed of the team is not a concern. We had good things going. We had some momentum there. I thought after we scored in the second period, the start of the third, and we gave up a real soft goal.

TERRY MURRAY: No, I don't think so. I don't think it is youth. It might be some time off. I don't want to look at excuses. I mean, both teams had pretty much the same time. We just got to be a heck of a lot better than we were in this game tonight. We have got to initiate more than we did. I thought that the fore-check game would be a big part of our game going into the game tonight. It ended up being a very small part of it because of our neutral zone decisions.

TERRY MURRAY: I am not thinking about any changes right at this time.

TERRY MURRAY: We got to know that the way we started to get things going in the third period with our fore-check is what we want to do right from the very beginning of the game. We have enough experience. We have got enough leaders in the locker room to identify a lot of things. We talked about it. The players in the room talked about a lot of the right stuff. We just did not make the right decisions tonight. So, we got a couple of days now. We will watch some tape and we will go over a lot of the game plan again. We got to be better. We will be better.

TERRY MURRAY: Well, again, that is all tied into getting the puck in deep and getting our fore-check game going. If the plays are going to be constantly turned over through the neutral zone and try to enter under control on a regular basis against this hockey club - they play well defensively. They have got three, four guys back and the size was a non-factor in the first two periods because of not making the decisions that were we are supposed to.

TERRY MURRAY: I think Eric has done an outstanding job with us disciplining this focus throughout the year and Playoffs this year. The penalty at the end of the game I am not concerned about. You know, the play - I don't know - it could have been called either way. He deserved the penalty. Maybe there could have been a holding, an obstruction call on it. It is late in the game. He just did what he felt he had to do, maybe set something up for later in the series. But, I am not concerned about it.

TERRY MURRAY: Well, the first three goals, he really had a little chance on, shorthanded goal, another turnover in the mid-zone. The goal that was probably a pretty good goal was the faceoff goal, Fedorov's goal. But, the last goal is a play that we have to have. That again is what we talked about between periods, the momentum of the goal late in the second period and having to be able to ride that emotion and come into the third period and get something going. And, it was taken away very quickly. We got to have those stops. I haven't watched the replay on it, but we got to put it behind. There is nothing we can do about this game tonight now. It is over. We have got to get ready for Game 2 and we have two days to do that.