NHL EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: PENGUINS v DEVILS

May 15, 2001

Larry Robinson

LARRY ROBINSON: Certainly, giving up that short-handed goal, what I think the biggest problem was is that we were up 2-0 and we tried to get offensive. Got four guys caught on the power play, which, with a 2-0 lead is the biggest no-no, especially when you've got, you know, Mario is on the ice. You can't get four guys caught down low like that. Number one, that was the start of it, and after that, you know, we stopped moving the puck up. The defense were slow-moving it. The forwards were slow getting back. We just wanted to play it easy, offensive game, and we paid the price for it.

LARRY ROBINSON: No. It was completely the opposite. I think for some reason or another, they wanted to do it their way again; and every time that we play their way, we gave up goals and we don't play effectively.

LARRY ROBINSON: No. We've played some pretty ugly games so far, until we settled down, until we play the way we were supposed to. But certainly, we can't have -- our defense, everybody was jumping off the ice all the time and their job should be to get the puck up to the forwards and be the last line of defense. You cannot -- you cannot make mistakes. Pittsburgh doesn't need -- it's not like you are playing another club that needs 7, 8, 9, 10, 12 chances to score goals. These guys don't need that. They don't need a lot of chances to score goals, and they certainly don't need 2-on-1's when you are on a power play and you are trying to protect a 2-0 lead.

LARRY ROBINSON: They threw the ice down the middle, they were picking the puck off and coming back at us. All of the things that we talked about that you cannot do and didn't want to do, all of the sudden, we decided we'd try it.

LARRY ROBINSON: I hope they got it out of the way, because there's not much left that they were not supposed to do that they did.

LARRY ROBINSON: No, I don't think so. You know, I know -- I know everybody thinks and knows that they didn't play a good game tonight. And if you are going to get a bad game out of your system, it's good to get it out in the second game, as opposed to the fifth or sixth game.

LARRY ROBINSON: No. They did a good job. They mixed up their lines a little bit. I actually didn't see -- I didn't think Jagr got that much ice time out there, but everything that they got, we gave to them.

LARRY ROBINSON: Game 2, you can read a lot because if the other team didn't have success, you are going to look at what did they change to have success. It gives us now a base to look at and to be prepared for the next game. So now we kind of get an idea of what they want to do and what they are going to do. The big thing for us to do is regroup and try to get that home ice advantage. We've got two chances in their building. You know, we play pretty well on the road. So this is a chance for us to regain that home ice and look to the next game.

LARRY ROBINSON: They went with pretty well four lines tonight, so they are using their depth, as well. It is just up to us to -- we've got to play better defensively. They are the type of team that, like I said, don't need a lot of chances. If we want to be successful against them, we are going to have to limit our chances against, and you cannot be giving up odd-man rushes and throwing the puck through the middle of the ice and those things that we did.

LARRY ROBINSON: For a while, it looked like a football game; there was so much clutching and grabbing and holding. I thought Mario didn't like that, but I guess it is working for everybody else, so he thought he might as well try it.

LARRY ROBINSON: No.

LARRY ROBINSON: No, I don't think so. I have not been watching him throughout the playoffs, and he led a bad goal in against Buffalo from behind the net; doesn't seem to bother him. So I didn't worry about him losing his focus. That's one of the strengths that he's had. He's been pretty calm and doesn't seem to get off of his game.

LARRY ROBINSON: I hope the reason that we played the way we did was complacency and we got that out of our system, because you can't. This is the playoffs. This is the conference finals. You've got to play every game for 60 minutes. Otherwise, you know, you are not going to be able to compete.

LARRY ROBINSON: Most of the time, we had Lemieux up against him. There might have been a few shifts here and there, but mostly because Bobby might have been out on a power play or whatever, but most of the time we tried to get him there against Lemieux. But, you know, for a while, he was on left wing and then he was at center and then he was -- moving him around a little bit.

LARRY ROBINSON: No. One was a short-handed and the other one was a give away right on the stick.

LARRY ROBINSON: We had moved our defense up on faceoff and defense went in and we got the puck and threw it back to where our defense was supposed to be.

LARRY ROBINSON: I don't know in it was Mario or Morozov or whoever.