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NHL EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: SENATORS v SABRESMay 11, 2007Lindy RuffBUFFALO, NEW YORK: Practice Day Q. Coach, based on last night's performance giveaways and the lack of success on the power play, all these things you're supposed to correct, where do you begin the to-do list? COACH LINDY RUFF: It's done by now. That to-do list is done. Got up early. Got it all done already while it was still foggy. The fog has lifted now. No. A lot of it comes down to execution. The players understand. We had a good meeting about it. Our execution wasn't very good. We weren't very good with the puck. We put the puck in some places, and we put a couple people in some pretty dangerous situations with the way we handled the puck. Q. Coach, your three guys missed today, first Dmitri? COACH LINDY RUFF: Just bumps and bruises. Just gave him a day off. Q. They all should be okay for Game 2? COACH LINDY RUFF: Some are upper-body bruise, lower body bruises. Some were just rest. Q. Coach, for the community that's lived and died with you guys, what do you say to them coming off of Game 1 and heading into Game 2? COACH LINDY RUFF: It's one game. I know it's tough. It doesn't sit well with anybody. Doesn't sit well with us as coaches, and I think some of things we saw in the game were stuff we hadn't been doing. I think we were overanxious. I thought we played our best first ten minutes, five-on-five that we've played in the playoffs. Great energy, some great shifts, score chances. Then some pretty sloppy execution with the puck that took some momentum out of our sails. Q. Five-on-five, lot of the offense originated from the points. They were getting shots through. Does your team as five-on-five have to get better to make sure to take it away from them? COACH LINDY RUFF: What if I told you five of the first seven chances were shorthanded or the power play - the shorthanded stuff. We can easily - those were two passes to our defensemen that they ended up on breakaways. Once we were in the zone, we broke down all the zone time. We weren't - there was a couple situations where we missed assignments, but overall, five-on-five in the zone - we want to correct a couple areas, but we were - overall I didn't mind that play. Q. I'm talking about when Ottawa is in the zone offensively? COACH LINDY RUFF: That's what I'm talking about, too. Q. Lindy, it's maybe not the first time we asked about these uncharacteristic lapses that the Sabres have had during the playoffs. Why does this team need to constantly be corrected on these things? COACH LINDY RUFF: We're still pretty young. We've got some young players. You know, we've got some players that are getting some very valuable playoff experience and some situations I think we've - we haven't reacted with a lot of moxie. We've been able to bounce back and trust our system, but there were some situations where, you know, the system wasn't intact, and that hurt us. Q. Lindy, how much do you read into - I know you don't like discussing your lineup but the D lines are back together. You talked about Danny's playing time down. It's been down significantly. His power play has been down, too. Is there a dissatisfaction there? COACH LINDY RUFF: No. I think what you're reading into was some of that has been little bit of frustration that Danny had. At the same time, I think if you looked at the last couple games and you looked even his 3-point performance, his ice time was down. When you start matching lines, you know, I explained that to the team, some guys' ice time will suffer. Coupled with the fact that he's playing with Tim Connolly and Tim has been trying to keep the real short shifts. That affects - once Tim goes off, Danny is looking to go off. That isn't favorable for us. I think the thinking of getting - putting that line back together again is to get Danny's ice time up. Palmer is a good - even-strength goal scorer all year and get his ice time up again. It worked for a couple games against the Rangers. We're going to put it back in the trunk and close the lid and see where we go from there. Q. Paul Gaustad or go with Zubrus and Chris? COACH LINDY RUFF: We haven't made that decision yet. Q. Lindy, you have to look inward if you're a coach, but Ottawa, maybe three periods of the 11 games that they've played in the playoffs, they did not play as they did last night. They just went on a roll, whatever, you have to slow them down as much as something like - COACH LINDY RUFF: We have to stop giving them the puck. We gave them the first two breakaways. We gave them - had some very, very poor execution when it came to handling the puck and not under duress, either. I got five-on-five, we had them on the run a few times. Not necessarily the third period where they sat back and were trying to protect, but I thought the first couple periods we had some real good offense zone time and we had some opportunities that I think we can take advantage of. But if we're going to be careless and give up breakaways and shorthanded breakaways and those types of situations, just off of careless turnovers. Even just careless passes. I can name a handful of those that in the playoff game those can kill you. Q. Coach, last two months we've seen how well Dmitri can play when he has confidence and he's done it so well. Do you worry about his confidence after what happened to him in that game? COACH LINDY RUFF: No. Dmitri has been one of our better defensemen. I think he's played - just go back even to the last game in The Garden where I thought he played very well. It was a tough night on him. But he's been very good for us, and I think, you know, it started going sideways and goaltender a little worse during the game. I expect him fully to bounce back and be the mainstay that he's been for us. Q. Lindy, Ryan cracked a bit of a joke today saying "It wouldn't be the Sabres if we didn't make it tough on ourselves." COACH LINDY RUFF: It has been tough. I said last night after the game, we made it even tougher. The challenges just keep getting bigger. It's going - lot of it is going to come down to execution under fire, and we've been pretty good under fire for the most part. Q. There's a lot of talk about desperation effort and stuff, and we've been hearing it all season. It suggests that you can manufacture desire. Are you tired of that? Do you believe that's the case? COACH LINDY RUFF: No, I don't. I showed some plays and talked about some plays today where we just were overzealous at times with our system. We overplayed situations. I just shock my head, "Where is he going? What's he doing?" I think the need was to please, they wanted to please. They wanted so bad to win. There was some real good desperation in the game. Thought what ended up happening is the need to please turned into a need of one guy to maybe trying to stick handle through extra guy. Q. The crowd? COACH LINDY RUFF: Yeah, please the whole crowd. Pretty jacked up. It showed in the first ten minutes. Then when it was 2-2, we were still creating a good number of chances, but some of the turnovers we were giving were on individual efforts, little quick puck movement, create some more offense. Q. Lindy, given the turnovers you referred to and Ottawa's penchant for the shorthanded goals, how much do you look at the possibility of using two Ds on the power play? COACH LINDY RUFF: No. No. Q. Not at all? COACH LINDY RUFF: No. We're going to stick with what we've been going with and maybe the occasion where you might see two defenseman. We're going to try to stay with what we've got. Q. Your fourth line chipped in between. Do you look at it most nights if your fourth line, especially if they can score - COACH LINDY RUFF: I don't think we have a fourth line. I think we've got a bunch of number 2s. You try to tell me which one is 4 or 2 or which one is different - different nights, it's different lines producing. I don't have numbers on them. Q. Coach, the thought was watching the series with the Rangers, the Sabres weren't playing their best hockey. Even though you lose last night's game, the way you lose it, is it a good thing from a coaching perspective saying, "Guys, watch the film and see your own worse enemies out there"? COACH LINDY RUFF: We gave them a small dose that they understand that. Even talking to individual players, you can't - we won't make those same mistakes. What I'd like - I really thought for the most part, we really skated. Once it went a little bit in the lockdown, we weren't as good, but for the first 40 minutes, our skating was real good. I thought our offensive zone pressure was good. We had some guys that had some real good jump. Q. Lindy, I guess there's a statistic that Ottawa is 0-8 after winning Game 1 in the playoff series. Does that mean anything? COACH LINDY RUFF: I hope it does. I didn't realize it, but I hope it does. Like I said, we made it tougher, but it's a seven game series that we're confident we can climb right back into. Okay. End of FastScripts |
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