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NHL WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: FLAMES v SHARKS

May 17, 2004

Darryl Sutter

SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA: Game Five

COACH DARRYL SUTTER

Q. A lot of team people had your team dead. No gas left in the tank. What happened?
DARRYL SUTTER: I think just the fact that we have heard that 75 times this year. I think it was our 100th game. So we played every game like it was our most important game of the season. It's a who-scores-first series. You look at the first period, I think that we were good and lucky. And when it was 2-0 then we hit the crossbar to make it 3-0. That could have salted it there. So I think it's two pretty evenly matched teams.
Q. The visiting team keeps getting that first goal though. That is the pattern.
DARRYL SUTTER: But the thing is when a team loses, now, loses a game, it's not because they played bad; when they win it's not because they played great. It's just that they're so even that you just kind go out then leave it out there and that's it.
Q. What about the performance of your big line: Jarome Iginla and Connie and the guys stepping up tonight?
DARRYL SUTTER: I thought the performance of all four lines was -- we had to move guys around because we were playing back to back and we needed a better -- I don't think anybody was great. I thought we were just good. I thought we needed something out of our fourth line, our fourth line this series have been outplayed. So we moved guys around a little bit and I think that made a difference for us.
Q. Obviously the turn-around didn't affect your team. It appeared that it might have affected the other team.
DARRYL SUTTER: I don't think it really affected either side. I think that both teams are really aware that they probably had to utilize your bench and I don't really -- because you knew it was setting up, it wasn't like they had the back-to-back in the St. Louis series, but they're a lot faster team than St. Louis and they took advantage of it on the second night. But I don't think there's enough of a discrepancy between these two teams in speed or in youth or anything like that for it to be a distinct advantage or a disadvantage.
Q. Was it important to get on them early to get that early jump tonight?
DARRYL SUTTER: Well, we wanted to come out of the gate because we weren't going to be able to use a short bench because of the back-to-back. We knew we had to establish early and play everybody. And we talked about it this morning and that's what we did. I'm sure they did, too. When you play back-to-back with travel, it doesn't matter. It usually doesn't matter if it's regular season or playoffs attrition. And about preparation and those things. I think for a back-to-back game, I thought it was, win or lose, I thought it was, from where I was, it was a pretty good hockey game.
Q. Do you feel that you got an edge on defense? The defensemen looked quite shaken today.
DARRYL SUTTER: Well, this whole series, there's a lot of young guys on both teams and it's been the turnovers that have been the difference in games, if you look at it. It's not because someone is not doing all they can or anything like that. I talked about it after the last game in Calgary, it was two turnovers that cost us our first two goals and it's the same thing tonight. It's not like -- those aren't on-purpose things, those are maybe somebody's overworking.

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