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NHL STANLEY CUP FINALS: FLAMES v LIGHTNINGMay 31, 2004Dave AndreychukBrad RichardsCALGARY, ALBERTA: Game Four Q. Brad, I know you talked about this in Tampa: When you got the game-winner now got the record. Kind of amazing accomplishment. Did you think anywhere it was going to hold up tonight scoring so early in the Game 1? BRAD RICHARDS: No. To score goals you try to score. It was a big power play, 5 on 3. I have no control over whether it is a game-winner or not. I think it was just a big goal to get on a 5 on 3. They kill that off, it might be a different game, momentum comes to us and you can't say enough about our team and Nik holding the fort to keep a shutout. Q. Brad, when you were a kid, did you dream of scoring a winning goal in a Stanley Cup playoff game or did you dream of scoring 7? BRAD RICHARDS: You dream of one obviously. I don't know, I'd rather not talk about the game-winners anymore. I have been asked probably 15 minutes already, so we won the game, like I said, it was a big goal for momentum. Q. This one set a Stanley Cup record for winning goals. You can understand why we're asking? BRAD RICHARDS: I understand. I have answered it a lot. It's great to score goals, but your team has to do the job to shut them down. It's not like I scored 7 in a row in overtime. A lot of those goals some of them, at the point were scored in the first period, second or third period. You can't control whether they are game-winners. That just shows how the team plays and shuts down opposition. Q. Your team has taken a real pounding from Calgary and you are hanging in there. What do you think of the way you stood up to the Calgary style and the way you came through tonight? DAVE ANDREYCHUK: Well, I think we are aware of it coming into this series. Our defense doesn't hold up for each other, there's no picking. That's the way we play and they know that, so they are vulnerable to getting more hits because of that. You can see it's a little different style than what they play, they are running interference all the time. For us it's -- I think we played through it. We're aware of it coming into this series. We knew what to expect. We knew that they were going to skate well and they were going to hit. For us, our team has to continue to stay focused on what we have to do, not how they are hitting us. Q. Tonight, coming into this game you had a couple of guys out. One guy you learned is out of the lineup late in the stages of things. What was the feeling on the bench kind of throughout the night? It seemed like it was almost, you know, second to second almost watching from upstairs the way the hits were going. DAVE ANDREYCHUK: Obviously that's not the way we wanted to finish the game after scoring the first goal. But we got the win. I don't think we played our best. They continued to come at us. We would have liked to have played in their end a little bit more as the game went on. But that's a team that's going to continue to play very hard. I thought our guys that came into the lineup did a great job for us, gave us a lot of energy, you know, they have been chomping at the bit watching, so both Sarich and Ben Clymer did an outstanding job of getting on the puck and having some good shifts. We needed that from them. Q. How much does fatigue, mental and physical, becoming a factor in this series or you individually and what do you do to combat it? DAVE ANDREYCHUK: Are you talking to me just because I am 40? (Laughs). I am -- I think a lot of it is in your mind and you can block a lot out. I feel great. I feel fine. I think that, you know, you battle through -- every guy has battled through the Playoffs. As a team we have played a lot of games. So I think that you know, both teams are tired. But the intensity and the way that you have to battle comes from the minds first, not on how physically you are feeling. I think our team has done that all year long with the travel schedule that we have, the amount of games that we play. Q. Your coach early in the season said that you put a lot of pressure on yourself to respond to certain situations. The night before you go stick side high. He makes a hell of a save. Kind of changes the course of the game. This one you went to the opposite side, the course of the game changes. What was your thinking there? Did you have enough time to know or just Dave put it where you had the best shot? BRAD RICHARDS: Yeah, well, the other night he did make a great save. I thought I really did think I scored and that could have changed the game and I knew tonight that you know, whether it's me or someone else on the power play, but when you get a shot almost inside the top of the circle, in the wheel house, you have to try to do something with it. I think Warrener was on the blocker side, so I couldn't shoot there and there was a lane on the glove side and I just shot it there. Q. They showed the shot of Ray Bourque on the broadcast hoisting the Cup. It has been associated with you in this series and in this Playoffs. I realize there are superstitions involved here but as you are coming closer and closer to it, the potential of it, how much is that potential feeling weighing into your thinking? DAVE ANDREYCHUK: Well, as I am playing in the game there's -- I am not feeling like this at all. I think after games, the people around me are excited for me. But I have learned over the years that I have to do my job on the ice first and that will take care of the things that are off the ice. So I am not even thinking about Ray and what happened to him a few years ago. I am thinking about trying to make our team win. Q. With the win tonight, obviously each team has won once at home. How important is to have home ice? DAVE ANDREYCHUK: I think we definitely have to use that to our advantage. We got two games in our building that we have played well in that building all playoff long. I think we have realized over the Playoffs that teams are going to come in and they are going to try to outwork us. We have to use the momentum of the fans and on our side, so it's not going to be easy just because we're at home. I think that's the message we're going to send in the next couple of days here, is that just because we're at home, we're not going to be able to just go out and win the game. We're going to have to put the effort in. Q. How much pressure did you guys feel on the ice on that 5 on 3? Rarely you are going to get a 5 on 3 for two minutes, especially in the early part of the game and with the significance of the first goal was there pressure on the group that we have to take advantage and score? BRAD RICHARDS: There really was. We had one early, Game 3, 5 on 4. I don't know if we got a shot. To get a 5 on 3, we were ready tonight. We controlled it the whole time pretty well and stayed patient. I think that was the biggest thing. We tried a few different things and then it didn't work but it set up something later and that was a shot that was, you know, inside the top of the circles but we didn't panic and try something that was stupid like going through the box or trying to make saucer passes through the box, where they can get picked off. We stayed with it and made the right plays.
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