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NHL EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: SENATORS v SABRES

May 18, 2007

Bryan Murray

BUFFALO, NEW YORK: Practice Day

Q. Bryan, just your thoughts going into Game 5, another chance to clinch this series and the team's mood going in?
COACH BRYAN MURRAY: Well, I think we're fine as far as preparation. I think there's a good attitude. The weather is great in Buffalo. I think everybody feels real good about that, and it should be - we know the Sabres are going to be, you know - they're home now. They've got great fans here, great noise in the building, and they'll try to feed off that to give them the's emotional lift that they got after the first goal in Ottawa.
But, again, we expect a real competitive situation on the part of both teams, and it should be a good game.

Q. Did you see a grittier Buffalo team in Game 4 than you had seen the first three games?
COACH BRYAN MURRAY: I don't think "gritty" was the word I looked at at all. I thought they scored early, competed real well. Lindy obviously shortened it down to the players that he felt were going best. I think it gave them the energy and excitement to really, really compete hard.

Q. You don't feel the need to convince your own players that they need to play with the energy of a seventh game?
COACH BRYAN MURRAY: Oh, yeah. I think that we try to do that every night. I think the opening play of the game the other night set us back on our heels a little bit and they fed off it, and they had gone the whole previous game without scoring, and to get one early like that, I think really got them going.
But, yeah, we're trying to play every game the same way but despiration level. (Mark) You know full well when you get into a series, there's ups and downs emotionally, and they had a little more going for them than we had, in particular at the start.

Q. Bryan, you're O-12 on the power plays the last games. It's obviously been a product of Ryan Miller. What do you want to see your guys do a little better in this game?
COACH BRYAN MURRAY: Well, I thought we weren't any good on the first three power plays the other night. I thought the fourth power play we were really good, had a couple great chances, missed one on the net, and Ryan made a good glove save on the other one.
The fifth one looked like the group, it was right after number four, and they looked tired through most of the power play, and we didn't get anything going on that at all. But like every power play, you've got to create a position to get a good shot and some traffic at the net. That's the whole philosophy of playoff power plays at this point in time.
It's amazing how it turns. The first three games or whatever, two games, I guess, we were really clicking, and again, it's an emotional thing, but it's like a cycle thing, too, in hockey where one night you're real good in a particular area, the next night you're not so good because of adjustment, whatever it may be.
Getting the puck in the zone, getting set up, getting a shot, that's priority.

Q. How mental does it become? Buffalo went 0-18 and it was this big cause is a Lebanon. (Mark)?
COACH BRYAN MURRAY: Only the media make it a problem. The players handle it very well. They understand. They talk - we talk about we had video this morning, and we went on the ice and did a little bit on the power play. The players handled it fine. It's damaging to you guys because it really bothers you when a team doesn't score on the power play.

Q. Is there a challenge to playing with a large series lead that you haven't closed out that maybe is underrated a little bit?
COACH BRYAN MURRAY: Yeah, I think it is. Nobody means to let themselves off, but a loss sometimes does you good. I watched the NBA fairly closely. I watched Chicago and Detroit, 3-0, and it looked like the Bulls were coming back, and it took the emotional charge of going on the road for Detroit to close them out, but same type of thing.
You don't mean to as an the athlete. You want to be hungry and tough every night, but you do have let-ups for a variety of reasons.

Q. The fact that you've been 3-1 in your previous two years and closed those out, is there any need to remind your team that you guys have been good since December, you know, have been resilient; maybe even been the better team of the series?
COACH BRYAN MURRAY: Well, we talk about what we have to do. Certainly we have a plan going in for tomorrow now. A couple of adjustments we've made, and we're hoping we can step to the plate and play at a high emotional level. We know we will because the fans will allow that to happen. They'll be so charged it will help our team, as well, I believe.
So our expectations is that energy-wise we'll match Buffalo, and then we'll see what happens after that.

Q. Bryan, there was an article in the Ottawa Sun that quoted you as perhaps making light of the Millennium Hotel.
COACH BRYAN MURRAY: The opposite. The opposite. Said we get a chance to come back to the Millennium Hotel. I was hoping when we left here, we wouldn't have to come back again. Now that we're here, they've got great wings and they treat us first class here. The opposite to doing that.

Q. You'll put up - you'll take another trip to Buffalo maybe this one, the last one in the spring, I guess?
COACH BRYAN MURRAY: Well, we do what we have to do.

Q. Bryan, they go to four defensemen the other night. Now that you know that's kind of something in their attack, do you make different plans for that offensively, how to attack their defense, knowing you might have more of a chance to wear them down?
COACH BRYAN MURRAY: If called upon, the other guys can play. They've played in this league for a long time. Jaro Spacek, I drafted him some years back. Now he can play in the National Hockey League. They felt out of necessity and I think motivation for the other guys, too. (Mark) When do you things like this, you shorten your deck, you change lines a little bit. It's a psychological thing, but it's an emotional thing for players to get a chance to play. They get charged up based on that.
Lindy did a good job the other night in getting that effort out of his team.

Q. Ryan Miller seems to be a bit more of a factor the past couple of games. You probably expect that. Is that as a result of - first of all, do you agree with that, and is that a result of him playing better or you guys made him look a little bit better?
COACH BRYAN MURRAY: We didn't have as much traffic that we like. He played better. He was comfortable in the net. It looked like he made some gloved stops that were big time saves. Like all goaltenders, he had a couple posts that helped him out.
Wade Redden missed a very, very close play on a power play, the fourth power play of the game, that could have turned the game in our favor, but he's a good goaltender. We have great respect for Ryan. We think the goaltending in this series has been real good.

Q. Is there a sense of confidence that you'll be able to carry over how you finish that game with the two goals, you know, into this one?
COACH BRYAN MURRAY: I think I made a point this morning in Ottawa that every game to me appears to be individual. I watched the other series last night. Within periods it was different, and I think the same thing in this. I think hockey now - I don't think there's like - because you win one night, you're going to win the next night based on emotion. I think you have to go play each game as well as you can and hope that through the course of the game, you can stick to a plan and win based on good effort.

Q. Ryan, it's 3-1. And in theory 3-1 still should feel like you're in control, but all this talk that seems to circle around your team from up there, do you feel like you're in control still, or do you feel that surge of, what, wonder, or how do you feel?
COACH BRYAN MURRAY: We feel we have to win one game. That's it. We know that - we isolate the games. We had to do that for a lot of the year. We weren't very good at stages. We have to win one game. That's all I know at this point.

Q. Some people here say the onus now shifts to Ottawa to close it out. There's no way there's less pressure on a team that's finishing elimination.
COACH BRYAN MURRAY: There's pressure in our business to win. If they don't, they don't like us. We have to play to win and so do they. That's the bottom line.

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