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NHL EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: SENATORS v SABRESMay 14, 2007Lindy RuffOTTAWA, ONTARIO: Game Three Q. Lindy, is this situation almost unbelievable. With the expectations and the season and to have it on the brink. COACH LINDY RUFF: Well, it's tough. It can happen. We ruined a pretty good performance by our goaltender, but we just have to worry about winning a game. Q. What was your philosophy early on and to come out of the first period with only four shots? COACH LINDY RUFF: Well, I think what you saw, we tried to play loose, we tried to get our defense involved. I think we gave up a fair amount of odd-numbered situations, but we didn't want them to be tight. If you look at it, they did a pretty good job of blocking shots, collapsing harder on the net which made a lot of our shots - I don't think we did a real good job of moving the pucks around. But you've got to give them a lot of credit for first and foremost being in the shot lane and making sure that bodies were getting on pucks. Q. Only two teams have come back from a 3-0 deficit in the playoffs '42 and '75, what does that do to your psychology? COACH LINDY RUFF: Well, let's add 2007. You got to remain positive. If you look back at the start of year, the number of games we won in a row. We put some real good strings together. We know we're doing it against a very good opponent. As I said before the series started, they've been very good. I mean, they were very good in the second half of the year, and they were very good in the first two playoff series against Pittsburgh and New Jersey, and it's going to take something special, but I think you have to believe. You have to go back to situations during the year, and I think we had situations during the year where we were able to put together some tremendous streaks, and we have to put one together now. Q. You mentioned Ryan's goaltending. Could you just elaborate on his performance tonight. COACH LINDY RUFF: I thought Ryan, you know, just played real aggressive, played the type of game that, you know, he played most of the time during the year. I thought maybe a little bit of tentativeness in his game the other night. Tonight right back to form where he was challenging. He was -- he just played goal. I thought he gave us a great effort. Q. Can you talk about just the lack of confidence on the power play. I know we're beating this to death. COACH LINDY RUFF: I think if you look at it, Ottawa has done a tremendous job of killing. They're a good killing team. Lot of puck pressure. Obviously when things aren't going well, you know, guys tighten up on the stick a little bit. We didn't make - even a late one there, he got to our point and the pass needed to go across the defense and hitting the stick. You get a little bit tight. We need to generate something that could give us some life. If we could get something good to happen on - you know, like we said in Game 2, it did a lot of the things. We generated some real good opportunities, and tonight that penalty killing was a lot more prevalent over the power plays even from our side to their side. Q. Can you say anything about Alfredsson? COACH LINDY RUFF: What would you like me to say about him? Q. Five straight games. Pretty formidable this year. COACH LINDY RUFF: He got a pretty good break on his. Got to be in the right place at the right time and he was. He's a good player. Alfie is a good player. Q. Is that goal sort of cruel one to suffer, more by that than design with Miller playing so well for the first period and a half and not giving much - COACH LINDY RUFF: That was tough. Ryan was very good. I look at that goal as anything that would take away from his game because it was a tough break that, you know, you get those sometimes, but Ryan, he made plenty of saves. Q. Are you doing enough physically right now? You're on the power play late. Are you trying to get a little more physical? COACH LINDY RUFF: We're smaller on the power play side. We're trying to use bigger people on the retrievables, bigger bodies so we got it in the feet or on the scrums. You're battling up some pretty strong defensemen there that we just felt we used a little bit more size, maybe gave us a little bit more of an opportunity. I don't know if -- we maybe won one power play face-off. You've got to give them some credit. Vermette at one point was five-and-one and you're killing 30 seconds each time you lose one of those. So there's some areas that if we can be a little bit better, we got to try to generate a little energy. Thanks. End of FastScripts |
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