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NHL EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: SABRES v HURRICANESMay 25, 2006Peter LavioletteBUFFALO, NEW YORK: Practice Day Q. Now that the Sabres are down another defenseman, does that change anything for you? COACH PETER LAVIOLETTE: It's obviously a tough loss for them. I don't think it really changes anything as far as what we do. You know, when we're playing our game and doing our thing, it's usually to try and take advantage of the opposition's defense from the top of the circles down. So I mean, we'll continue to make that part of our game plan, but it's not always, I guess, executed the way we want it to with the enthusiasm we wanted it to, but that's usually what we try to do. The fact that he's out, I think, it's an area that you try to exploit. Q. How did the Sabres get to play uncharacteristic (inaudible)? COACH PETER LAVIOLETTE: I think when you are hitting there's a chance that you can react, and they were hitting. I thought that we were doing the hitting in Game 2; they did the hitting in Game 3. We have got to be, I think, more on our toes to try and be a little bit more physical than we were last night but we responded to them. They initiated, we responded. We got to do better job with our discipline. Q. How difficult is it at this time of year to play physical and play aggressive and not lose your cool? COACH PETER LAVIOLETTE: I don't know, it's a pretty big picture, the prize at the end seems worth it. You have got to do your best to try and control your emotions. It is a fine line. You are asking for all this emotion and all this energy, then you are asking them to control it in certain situations and it's difficult to do. But sometimes a team who does it better has the best chance of winning the game. Q. When you pulled Cam it wasn't so much about him, you made it clear, but trying to kick start your team? COACH PETER LAVIOLETTE: Yeah, he made some really big saves and there was a couple that he couldn't do anything about, I thought that he really competed in there and it was -- we were just going down a road and try and change it, try and take a different course of action. Q. Have you made a decision on tomorrow night as far as goaltenders? COACH PETER LAVIOLETTE: I have no comments for all of you that will be in the room tomorrow, I will have no comments on injuries or lineups, thank you. Q. How do you refocus the team after a game like that? COACH PETER LAVIOLETTE: Our team has always responded fairly well whenever we're faced with a game we're not happy with, and we talk about it and some honesty and, you know, I don't think that you will go into our room and find guys happy with the way we played last night. We certainly hope for a better effort tomorrow night. But whether it was honesty today, there is also -- there's an honest look at the way we played and nobody is happy with it. Q. Is Eric Staal a surprise to you the fact that he stepped up in the playoffs, the way he's doing it? COACH PETER LAVIOLETTE: If you were around him all year I don't think it was a surprise to you; this is a continuation of his regular season. I think what he's proving at this point is that he's a playoff player and sometimes that doesn't translate, but what he's doing now I think is an extenuation of that. In the third period the game was on the line last night, he picked his game up above all others and tried to make a difference. Q. The way the second periods have gone in this series, seems like the slightest measure of a margin of error, how thin it is the way these two teams play, the styles (inaudible)? COACH PETER LAVIOLETTE: We obviously didn't play a good second period. We weren't skating very well. We were standing, and because we were standing we were easy targets to hit. Then we reacted to that and ended up taking too many penalties. 5 on 5 we have done some good things but we knew coming into this that they had a dangerous power play and we got to remain disciplined. So it was hard to get a read in the second period because we went to the box an awful lot. When you go to the box, it takes the flow out of your bench. You got a lot of guys sitting there. Your penalty killers end up going out every other shift, Rod Brind'Amour and Justin Williams and the defensive core that you use, and guys that play in a lot of different situations get taxed a little bit in that amount of time, and other guys are sitting in that amount of time and it just kind of, it takes away from the flow. We had TV timeout and we talked about getting one, eight minutes to go in the second period, just getting one goal before we went in. If we could do that, we felt like we could win the game. Just refocused after the second period, came out in the third. Against a good team like Buffalo, I don't think we can rely on one period, we need to do a better job of playing 60 minutes of hockey.
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