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NHL WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: FLAMES v SHARKS

May 16, 2004

Ron Wilson

CALGARY, ALBERTA: Game Four

Q. What do you think's made the difference here?
RON WILSON: We have played much better in our own end. Like tonight, I mean I can't really think of too many scoring chances five on five. And to be perfectly honest with you, our penalty killing was incredible tonight. And I don't know how we ended up on the short side of some of the scrums and things like that, but we did. The focus or the mark of a good team is to ignore that kind of stuff and get the job done, which is more important than responding to any of the other stuff.
Unbelievable penalty killing. And it didn't require -- with you guys it's always be Nabby this and Nabby that. It didn't require Nabby to be anything more than a good goalie tonight. He didn't see very many pucks that were quality. Obviously too, our penalty -- our powerplay scored a couple of key goals for us. And when they were running around -- I mean, if your most intimidating play will be your powerplay, if they're trying to run you out of the building or punch your lights out, you get a powerplay, the best slap back at another team is not a fist, it's a powerplay goal, and we managed to do that two times.
Q. Do you like your chances now going back home?
RON WILSON: It's back to square one. Obviously we have to win a home game here. I bet you a lot of people in San Jose didn't think we're were coming back and having an opportunity to play tomorrow. So just show up and be able to support us. Our team really showed the heart of a lion coming in an a tough place and winning two games and relatively convincingly tonight. So we do have some momentum, but the crowd can be a factor and hopefully they will be supporting us tomorrow.
Q. What do you think you have to do to break this away-game trend?
RON WILSON: It's not so much that. It's who scores first wins. I think we have got to be tomorrow -- play our home game, but be patient and actually everybody thinks we're a first period team. I'm not going to tell you, make you do some research look at our second period record. How many goals we have scored and how many we have given up. Tomorrow we got to make sure that they don't get any sniffs and we get a good start.
Q. You've done a good job on Jarome Iginla. He's been, as much as anything, I think in the third period he got frustrated. But he didn't have any space out there at all?
RON WILSON: Well, that's a credit to our defense again. This is the third series we have played in where there's been a great superstar hockey player on the other team or a number of them, and our defense has risen to the occasion, Scott Hannan above all, tonight Mike Rathje might have played his best game of the year and you'll see something because he scored. But he was a physical presence. And going in corners, guys couldn't knock him off the puck. He was throwing his weight around and it was quite a performance. And Kyle McLaren, all our D's were physically involve. And they're all good skaters, it's difficult to find room, if they're in position. And they were in position all night long.
Q. As you catch your breath, what do you expect from the Flames tomorrow that might be different from today?
RON WILSON: Not much. They have a -- they play the same every night. Coach will have them prepared and they will come hard and I would think that since our powerplay got going and is feeling pretty confident. They can't take bad penalties and our powerplay's obviously much better at home than on the road and our penalty killing is even better at home than on the road. They're going to be physical. They will try to push us around, but Mike Rathje said it best yesterday or two days ago when he said, that kind of stuff's not going to intimidate our team. All the other extra curricular activity and we showed that tonight. They could do what they wanted physically, but it didn't deter us from getting the job done.
Q. Do you think you found some cracks in Kiprusoff, too?
RON WILSON: Kipper made a mistake, I guess, on the Cheechoo goal somewhat I think his defenseman should have kept on going. But other than that, I don't know what he was supposed to do. We had almost a five-on-two. They got caught on a bad change on Mike Rathje's goal and the other two were goal mouth passes on the powerplay, and he didn't have a chance. So I wouldn't never go near and say that Kipper's, we found the chink in his armor. Kipper's shown in the playoffs. If he had what you guys would say is a bad outing by the number of goals against, he's bounced right back the next night or two days later and had a good game. The benefit for us is we're a good team back to back. And so clearly the momentum is on our side. Now we just got to not get full of ourselves; understand how hard this series is and how much work we still have ahead of us.
Q. Were you surprised at the end of the game when they kicked Thornton and Simon off?
RON WILSON: Well, I don't know where Scott Thornton's supposed to go when he backs off 10 feet inside our zone and Chris Simon is on a faceoff standing in his face. But you also have to understand it's the second game in a row where they put guys in the penalty box and Calgary has too many men on the ice and they were about to drop the puck again. And we're screaming, I don't know, you know, "hey, count." If you're putting guys in the box and there's four people who are supposed to know what's, who is in and who is out, throw the right people off the ice, and none of this stuff will happen. But it happened. So fortunately, again, -- they almost scored the other night. We were screaming from the bench that they had too many men on the ice, there's a penalty up on board and they have got 6 guys on the ice with their goalie out. They had a penalty, they were in the box. And then Darryl manages to stall for three or four minutes to get an explanation. They have no explanation. You're supposed to have a man in the box. You're short handed. But Darryl's done a great job of that at the end of games.
Q. I know a lot of times it depend on the score, but it seemed as though Game Three and really in Game Four you guys really went at them more and tried to take their time and space more than you did in San Jose. Is that a change you made or just something you're doing better?
RON WILSON: No, we're doing a little better, but Game One, they will tell you, we were in their face all night long but maybe to the point of being too in their face. And it cost us in terms of scoring goals. We had shots, opportunities. Game Two the worst thing that could happen is they score on the first shift and it kind of buckled us a little bit like the fight last night. One punch and you're out. And that's what happened in Game Two. And we got back a little bit to our game in number 3 and tonight was the kind of games that we have been playing with regularity for a long time now.
Q. What was with Iginla at the end of the game?
RON WILSON: He's just frustrated. He's frustrated as all heck. He's not getting much room out there. And we saw with Peter Forsberg, we have seen it with Keith Tkachuk, and I think the Hockey Canada people saw it, too, in the sense of having such a high opinion of Scott Hannan and Mike Rathje as well being in the mix for Team Canada. But I'm not going to debate that, because they made a lot of good choices. How can you go wrong in Canada? You've got so many players to choose from. But you see how good these guys are going to be for years to come.

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