NHL STANLEY CUP FINALS: STARS v DEVILS

June 5, 2000

John Madden

JOHN MADDEN: I wasn't really concerned with what he was doing. When I had missed the first shot on the 2 on 1, I went back to the bench. I was told that if I get another chance shoot their again, go a little blocker, because you had him beat this time. I got real lucky to have the same exact shot twice within about 30 seconds.

JOHN MADDEN: For me I watch a lot of video. I have watched a lot of powerplays and I find they all do the same thing, you know, from one thing to the next, obviously change it up a little bit, but the biggest key is try to force them. Don't let them get too much time. Especially in this League, if you let skilled players handle the puck for a long time, they are going to make skillful passes; great plays, that is how goals go in.

JOHN MADDEN: When we went into the intermission before the third period, we were all real positive and we just said it was a matter of time before we scored some goals. That is what we were looking to do, trying to get everything on net and we were going to come at them with everything we had. That was our intention and Sergei Brylin scored a game-breaking goal. He broke things out at the end for us. Rafalski also scored. That took a little pressure off us. So I think everybody was on the same page and we felt confident. We didn't feel that we were going to lose the game.

JOHN MADDEN: That is pretty much it.

JOHN MADDEN: Well, it is a great feeling and the Jersey organization I owe a lot to them for finding me and I think -- I guess I owe thanks to Brendan Morrison who is a player at the University of Michigan which Jersey came out a lot and watched him play so I got a little notoriety through him.

JOHN MADDEN: I don't know, I was just saying to the guys in the dressing room I don't know if I am going to be able to sleep the next couple of nights. I wish we were playing tomorrow so we can get this thing going. By no means is this thing over. We still have to win a game and when a team is fighting for their lives it is going to be tough to do. But it is going to be tough to adjust the next three days.

JOHN MADDEN: No, well, obviously, it was sore and affected most of my faceoffs. My stick kept popping out of my hands on the faceoffs. But I didn't -- when he first slashed me I didn't think anything was broken. I had a little trouble getting feel back in my hand; getting my grip back, that was about it.

JOHN MADDEN: The guys said if I would have took off right away, I would have a clear-cut break-a-way. I actually thought the guy who was coming over was on my team. Then when I looked over I was like: He is not on my team. I picked up the pace a little bit and made more of a streamline to the net, I guess. I thought I was going to pass to him but it is a good thing I didn't.

JOHN MADDEN: We felt we were good enough to get one out of them after winning the first game. We wanted to get greedy, we wanted two games, that was our intention. I mean, you don't go in games thinking we got one and that is all we really want to get out of here. We thought we could get two, and you know, got a little lucky tonight in terms of basically two minutes of that whole game that Dallas kind of fell asleep and we took advantage of it.

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