NHL STANLEY CUP FINALS: RED WINGS v FLYERS

June 6, 1997

Mike Vernon

MIKE VERNON: Things looked pretty grim there for a while. I thought for sure that I would have been moved. But I mean, I had a couple of meetings with Scotty and he reassured me he wouldn't. So right there when he said he wasn't going to move me, things started to enter my mind and that, you know, that he might use me in Playoffs or he might use me. And, so that I -- you know, I just tried to get myself ready and he played me a lot more in the second half of the season and then he decided to go with me in the Playoffs. So, I mean, I was shocked, but yet, like I said, in the conference call, I thought more or less that I was an insurance policy this season instead of a starter.

MIKE VERNON: Well, I think you just have to watch and you can see that they are doing a great job in front of me. But, I think the key to our defense is the pressure we apply on their defense and on their goal. When we get the puck in deep, when we are skating and making it tough on their defense, that is when we have success. When you keep the puck out of your own end of the ice, you have a better chance of keeping your goals against down and this is what we have -- you know, we have been doing lately and we have been very successful with it. And, the guys, you know, when you have four lines and six defense, you can do that and they shift in and shift out. When you start going down to two lines, it makes it tough to keep that speed up and to keep that intensity there. So, with the four lines, it makes it a lot easier, I think, on everybody and everybody still feels very fresh.

MIKE VERNON: It is still far from over and you just have to approach it the same way we have approached the last three. We want to win and that is the bottom line. So, we just want to keep our same game plan going into Game 4 and just continue the hard work ethic.