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NHL WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: FLAMES v SHARKS

May 11, 2004

Ron Wilson

SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA: Game Two

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.
Q. What happened?
RON WILSON: Well, they took us right out of the game right off the bat in the first shift. They got a little bit of a break on the goal. It ricocheted off of Hannan, went across the crease, hit Jason Marshall and went in. It was like in the sense of de'ja vu all over again. They took the game. They got excited at that point.
I mean, they took it to us for the rest of the first period. We didn't compete as hard as we needed to compete. In fact, we started to -- in response to their physicality, we went way overboard on our own, looking for hits, got completely out of our style of play.
We kind of recovered it in the second period and had ample scoring opportunities to get ourselves -- we did, we got ourselves back into the Game five minutes in and had some great opportunities after that to tie. But in the third period, we were pressing, and they managed to counterattack two times and basically buried us.
You know, when I look at the whole game, I think we had six forwards who didn't get a shot on goal. That basically says everything in a nutshell right there. A lot of the credit has to go to Calgary. But we have to be at fault ourselves for not generating enough and being committed enough to drive to the net, put the puck in places where we could hunt it down.
Q. Can you comment on the overall effort level that you saw from your team tonight?
RON WILSON: I hate that word "effort." That makes it sound like you're not trying. We were spinning our wheels and weren't in sync. We weren't surrounding the puck. We weren't supporting the puck. It started early in the game where our D -- we were skating two or three strides with it rather than getting it and quickly moving it. That's one of our strengths, is speed of puck movement, and we didn't do that tonight.
I mean, that's why we got whipped the way we did. We just never, at the beginning of the game, initiate the speed part of it. Again, Calgary was prepared tonight. But part of it was our own fault. We just didn't get the job done. We didn't execute, period.
Q. What is McLaren's status?
RON WILSON: It's an upper body injury. Day to day.
Q. When did you realize you might not have him and when did you realize you would not have him?
RON WILSON: I knew that this morning, that he probably wasn't going to play. You have to be prepared for that.
Q. When the crowd starts to get on you a little bit, it's a good time to maybe get out of Dodge. Do you think going on the road alleviates a little bit of that?
RON WILSON: Well, yeah. We've dug a heck of a hole for ourselves. But it's not impossible to get out. We have to play a lot better than we did tonight, try to recapture the style of play that made us successful in the first two rounds, and actually -- in terms of how we played in the first game. We didn't get the result we wanted, but I thought that they'd find a way to, you know, snuff out all the shots that we had.
We just weren't as determined. We were going up the ice in like three rows instead of coming across and doubling up on people. It was pretty evident right off the bat.
But it would be easier to calm the situation down on the road. Obviously, we're going to have to deal with a very hostile environment right off the bat in Calgary on Thursday night in the first 10 minutes. We're probably going to have to weather a heck of a storm. I'm going to have to be left with thinking about making some changes to our lineup, inserting different people who might be able to handle that kind of environment better and shake up our lines a little bit to kind of get people thinking instead of, you know, the status quo. That wasn't good enough for me tonight.
Q. They've kind of taken the crowd out of the game a little bit just by scoring first in this game. How much would the scoring help?
RON WILSON: It would be nice. But like I said, they come up the ice, take a longshot, it goes off of two legs and in. That's one of the things that happens. You try to tell everybody on the bench it's a bit of a fluke. That's the home-ice advantage, it's about a goal, so we just lost it. Now let's get back to work.
We never really did. That seemed to affect us a little bit more. I mean, in the last game, they didn't score in the first shift. We had already had three or four scoring chances before they created anything. Tonight, normal situation, you wouldn't even call that kind of a shot a scoring chance, but it ended up in the net. You just have to deal with it.
Q. Are you one to consider at this point a somewhat drastic move like, for instance, a goaltending change?
RON WILSON: I'm not going to do anything like that. But I've got some healthy forwards who deserve a shot, have contributed a lot. I have to look at some of the guys who have struggled throughout the playoffs. But those are decisions that you make tomorrow after the emotions of losing on the situation we're in, kind of everything settles down.
Q. How much does did you miss McLaren?
RON WILSON: We certainly miss him, but our young players weren't the ones making mistakes. We've had to deal all season long with having Kyle missing two weeks here, a week there, and we've done fine without him. I thought we would more than make up for it, but obviously it didn't happen.
It had nothing to do with Kyle being out.
Q. Your team has been so poised. Are you surprised at the way they reacted after that early goal?
RON WILSON: No, I don't think -- it had nothing to do with poise. We started right in the first shift. Mike Ricci got hurt about 10 seconds in and had to change. Patty jumped on the ice and tried to run a guy over in the neutral zone. And that's not his game. I had a bad feeling at that point, that when you've got your skill people trying to run over guys on Calgary, that you might be in a -- that we're a little out of sync. It seemed to continue for the whole period.
Q. You're maybe getting out-goaltended a bit in the series. Does that concern you?
RON WILSON: Kipper has played very well. Yeah, it's a concern. But, you know, they still have to win two more games. Nabby will certainly be motivated, want to bounce back. You got to tip your hat, Kipper made some huge saves tonight when we were just one goal behind, three or four great saves, a couple in the third period that could have made a difference, but didn't.
I mean, you have to live with it. Now we go on the road, we'll have to find a way to regroup and recover.
Q. You guys traditionally this year have been a pretty good first-period team, fast starts. What do you have to do to try to get back to that?
RON WILSON: Just being committed to what we're doing and trust each other out there. I don't think there's any secret to how we've gotten off to the good starts. Actually the other night we had a great start. A couple of great shifts right off the bat.
Sometimes you're not going to score. It didn't daunt us the other night; we kept coming. But tonight the first shift, we kind of halfway get it in the zone, you know, one guy changes on a line, the next thing you know, they come down and fire one from the wing, like I said, that ping-pongs its way in. There's not much you can do there.
Obviously, if the puck didn't hit Scotty Hannan, it would have hit Nabby. But it went off Scotty, he blocks the shot, goes off Jason Marshall, ends up in the net. It's one of those things.
Q. You talk about the mistakes of the defensemen, not the younger ones. Did they try to do too much, or just bad judgment?
RON WILSON: We just over-handled the puck. Our strength has been moving the puck quickly, and tonight we were handling it, just not moving the puck with the authority we need to to generate the attack.
Once that starts, the forwards start going to different spots, the whole thing breaks down. We got back to it in the second period. We recovered and played with some speed and put some pressure on them, created some power-plays. But our power-play was just futile tonight. Not much energy, we weren't really skating. We skate like heck five-on-five, and seem to relax a little bit on our power-play. We didn't have the intensity we needed to be successful.
Q. In your mind, is the role of a coach now magnified in this situation? Do you feel you've got to come up with something beyond making a roster adjustment here, use all the resources you have?
RON WILSON: There's no super-secret stuff to what we do. The main thing for me is to convince our team, I suppose, that it's possible for us to win the series. That's all. You'll see who rises to the top here. You know, there will be some people -- and this is where you find out the leadership on your team. There will be some people who will shrink back, others who will step forward. You rely on the people who step forward, and hopefully they can create enough of an impact on the guys who are struggling right now to push them or pull them forward with them.
Q. Basically it's been such a confident team over the course of the season, do you feel they're not fragile enough to let a few games shake that?
RON WILSON: We're not going to be -- we'll be fragile tonight, obviously. But we've been resilient. We've lost two and three games in a row. We lost two in a row to Colorado, and everybody wrote us off that we were going to lose them all. We were a resilient bunch, came up with our best effort in Colorado. That's essentially our position.
We've got to think about the next game, the next period, go out there and win the next period, then move on from there. We've been resilient all season long. I don't see why it would change now.
Q. What disappointed you the most?
RON WILSON: Not any one particular thing.

End of FastScripts...

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