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NHL EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: HURRICANES v PENGUINS

May 21, 2009

Dan Bylsma

PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA: Game Two

SCHUYLER BAEHMAN: Questions for Coach.

Q. Coach, talk about Evgeni showing like that? And being on out there as much as he was?
COACH BYLSMA: Well, he just played that well, and, you know, to make plays like that makes everybody look good. He was great tonight. Great around the net. He went to the net hard. Handled those situations.
They tried to run over and over again, get good players in the offensive zone. He went to the net and made a couple of outstanding plays.

Q. Can you try to describe what happened with that goal when he got up to the net?
COACH BYLSMA: The third goal? Well, the face-off play. It was called the Geno for a reason. And he pushed through, and he went and got it himself. And after that he takes it to the net, gets it on his backhand, and there's not a lot of room there where he played. There's not many players in the world that can make a play like that. And two of them are on our team.

Q. 11 playoff goals in a game, pretty rare. Even more rare to have them on an even string. How much scoring for goalies of this magnitude?
COACH BYLSMA: You have to be surprised at the goal production. Both goaltenders are outstanding. And they try to play in the offensive zone for a reason. They just do a good job of it at times.
They answered back in the first period. And then again in the third period when they tied it up there in the offensive zone. They made a good call, and made the goal.
Same thing for our team. We got to the offensive zone and were able to make plays in the offensive zone and taking advantage. It's tough to do. Taking second chances. Both teams did a good job of that. And both teams answered throughout the night fortunately on Thursday, our guys were able to do it two more times.

Q. Talk about the playoff goal for the season? Were you concerned at all with not scoring goals? Was he doing the right things? Was he playing the right way?
COACH BYLSMA: He was doing a lot of those things and providing opportunities for them to have success tonight. Before he got the goal, he had two or three are on four really good chances there to get to the goal. And I'm happy for him. I'm happy that, you know, he can stop it.
But you know he knows he's playing the right way. He's just a physical presence for our team.
You know, his teammates are happy for him because we know the situation when you read in the paper, he tries to put it inside. He tried to play that way over and over tonight. He had a couple of opportunities to score the big goal there. It's good to see him get on the score sheet.
But he did a lot of good things tonight just like he's been doing in the past for us. He had a couple of great plays. Went to the net. It was tough in the corners, and basically he got the goal.

Q. It seemed like one of the things Carolina wanted to do in this game is put some bodies on Malkin, and punish him. And all it seemed to do was bring their game a little bit higher?
COACH BYLSMA: I think this game had much more playoff feel than the first game. There were more physical plays and more after-the-whistle stuff, and more emotions in the game and throughout the game.
Maybe that was just focus, but, you know, that emotion is something that we feel. We're trying to get it in our game and trying to feed off of it. And tonight I thought our team did a good job continuing to play whistle to whistle. Playing on that emotion, and using the emotion in the positive way.
In the third period with the fourth goal, we still played. We still got to the offensive zone. We still got the pucks to the goalie and got to the offensive zone. I really liked the way our team responded in the face of that goal. Clearly we have emotion in this series now.

Q. Well into the second period they were dominating they outshot you. And midway through that second period that momentum seemed to change. Did you see anything specifically behind that change? You went on on the rest of the way. I think it was a four-on-three at that point. Was there anything behind that shift?
COACH BYLSMA: I think you touched on it there with that last one. The penalty kill, four-on-three. It's a four-on-three, five-on-three and there were a lot of things out there. A huge penalty kill. The crowd started getting into it. And with that kill they started to gain a big momentum shift there. It kind of grew from there.
You look at the game, and the momentum shifts, and you do those types of things and we escalated. You have your team's momentum, and they he did a great job in getting that momentum for us, and keeping them up for it, and we've got our work cut out for us.

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