NHL STANLEY CUP FINALS: CAPITALS v RED WINGS

June 10, 1998

Ron Wilson

RON WILSON: I think Richard is learning his craft here in terms of being consistent. We still see the rookie in him a little bit with ups and downs throughout a game and from game to game. But, Richard, probably his biggest asset is his strength on his feet. He is incredibly strong on his feet. As strong as anybody I have ever been around. He has got great speed and a very good shot. And, he is it -- like he is learning the game where to go on the ice where to jump into the holes, and, you know, he has played with different people this year. In the first three quarters of the year, he played with Janbulis and Steve Konawalchuk, and he has only been a part of this line for, I guess, three, four weeks. It is a credit to him and his line mates that they have been able to be as consistent as they have been throughout the Playoffs. He is just a fun, loving kid and he goes out there and he is very relaxed. He is not intimidated by this atmosphere at all. He is the new breed of -- I guess European player who comes over as a youngster and plays junior hockey and isn't intimidated by any stretch of the imagination with the surroundings.

RON WILSON: I think that you have got to give the Red Wings defense a lot of credit. They play an " in-your-face game" and there is no backing off from them. Peter, I mean, essentially has faced this throughout the Playoffs, but he is one of those guys that if you forget about him for five seconds here, ten seconds there, he is really going to burn you. He had some opportunities as the game wore on, and it is just a matter of him sniffing out the team. It is not a one-man show, the people that he plays with, whether it is Andrei Nikolishin and Richard Zednick, the defense pairing have to do the job of deflecting some of the heat away from him so that Peter can sort of find himself, I guess, in a stelf-mode (sic) where he can get lost and then jump into a hole.

RON WILSON: Yes, I do. We have had trouble at times when we get down a goal throughout the season. We have never been really successful when we haven't scored first and when Detroit scored the first goal last night, there was a definite sag on our bench. It lasted for probably 15 to 20 minutes of playing time, but then we rebounded and certainly felt a lot better ourselves when -- about ourselves when Richard Zednick scored. From that point on, I thought we relaxed and started to get closer to playing the way that we are capable of playing.

RON WILSON: Well, it is an optional practice so there really aren't any points other than keeping the people who didn't play sharp and the ones who don't get much ice time, I like to get them out there and get them sharp. We will worry about that tomorrow. We have got to work a lot harder on our powerplay. We went out and we relaxed. I have always said it is a privilege to play the powerplay and if our skilled people are backing off a little bit in those opportunities, then I won't hesitate tomorrow night to throw a third or a fourth line on the powerplay to sort of bank and crash and go to the net hard to maybe stir things up a little bit.

RON WILSON: About Scotty?

RON WILSON: No, I can't worry about what the Red Wings are doing and I don't think he is worried about what the Capitals are doing. You prepare your team in the best way possible. You mix things up. What you are trying to do as a coach, at this point in the season, if your team is not prepared, I mean, we have worked nine months or so to get here, you are looking as a coach to get people who are playing well a little bit more ice time. Trying to find places to get your best players going. I thought our Nikolishin line played very well, and towards the end of the game the Adam Oates line started to play better as well. At this point in the season, your top players, you know, really have to be on top of their game and at times last night we showed a lot of rustiness. We are an older team. I noticed at other times this year in the Playoffs when we have had those two or three day breaks in the schedule, our older players have struggled the most with that. They found themselves a little bit out of rhythm. So, I am hopeful that playing every other day, basically, the rest of the way, will get our players back into their normal rhythm.

RON WILSON: Well, there is a lot of hoopla, you can't avoid that, but, I think it puts our mind a little bit at ease from what to expect from the Red Wings. We know that they will play better, but we also understand that we can play much better. Yesterday was a feeling-out process and we came out of it. We lost the Game 2 to 1 and we had opportunities in the third period to tie it to get it to maybe overtime and a victory. The bottom line is: It is winning and losing and how you play doesn't really amount to anything. Professional sports, it swings back and forth so dramatically from game to game that it is oftentimes hard to understand.

RON WILSON: We came here for a split -- at least a split. We are not going to get a sweep obviously, but we would like to win one game. However, if we don't, we haven't played at home yet, and we haven't been able to see how our fans are going to react and absorb their energy. So, if we lose tomorrow, we are down 2 to nothing in a series. Obviously against a team like Detroit, it is going to be difficult to come back from, but I don't believe in my heart that it is impossible.

RON WILSON: I think Ozzie is as good a goalie as most in this League and it is funny if you let a bad goal in or make a mistake, everybody wants to jump on you, look for a chink in your armor. I thought he was very solid last night. I didn't see him make any mistakes before. The team believes in him, that is all what really matters; not what anybody else thinks.

RON WILSON: If we can get the same effort from both of those players, we are in pretty good shape. I thought Dale competed hard all night long. He played physical. He was emotional. Tik, I probably have to find areas where we can use his offensive strengths a little bit more. That is what my goal is as a coach - to get him into a few more offensive situations because, you know, he is one of the leading scorers of all-time in the Playoffs. He has all been successful and -- but maybe with a Todd Krygier coming back into our lineup tomorrow night, I am hopeful that he will be able to get in there; that Tik's line will be able to get something done offensively. If not, we will move Tik around and I have to mix our lines up and try to keep Scotty off balance as much as he is trying to keep us off balance.

RON WILSON: George and I go back to Vancouver. My last year as assistant coach under Pat Quinn, George had come in and replaced Brian Burke. The summer before George was an intern while he was completing law school at Rutgers and I got to know him quite well there because I was just hanging around and George came in and asked a lot of questions. We have maintained, I guess, a casual friendship until last summer and I had interviewed before, or while George was interviewing for the general manager's job and there was a Sunday about a year ago, I got a call in the afternoon -- no, it was the early morning from George and George says: You know why I am calling. I said: Well, I assume that the only reason you are calling me because you are going to be named the general manager in Washington. He said: Yeah that is right. So, I said: Congratulations. That is great. Then he asked me if I wanted -- if I wanted to coach the team. That was the extent of my interview with George. And I said: Well, if you are going there, George, yeah, I'd love to come along. I think it would be great because -- the interview process that we had had, had been over the course of our friendship for three or four years. And, we have a similar sense of humor and a similar -- obviously a similar set of goals and also very similar in how we think a team should play and the route to get your team to the position that we seem to find ourselves in today. I don't think neither George nor I expected this year to be in the Finals. We hoped it could happen and we thought it was a possibility, but I don't think that we could actually say there was a blueprint that definitely the Capitals are in the Finals this year. It just worked out that way. To be honest with you, George and I haven't had an argument this year. What I like about working with George is he allows me to coach the team. He just wants to know exactly what we are doing. He comes in after the game. He is very supportive, win, lose, or draw. And, I think that is probably more important to our coaching staff than anything else he has done this year. That you lose a game, a tough game, George is there giving you a pat on the back and there haven't been very many like -- like he is very even keel night after night with George. That is very much appreciated from me.