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NHL STANLEY CUP FINALS: PENGUINS v RED WINGS

June 12, 2009

Dan Bylsma

DETROIT, MICHIGAN: Game Seven

DETROIT Â– 1
PITTSBURGH - 2

BRYAN BYSLMA: Hi, I'm Bryan Bylsma. His son (laughing).

Q. When you took over this team struggling to make the playoffs, could you have imagined something like this? And second, why do you think the players responded so well to your system?
COACH BYLSMA: No. You know, I think I knew the quality of the players we had, and the team that we had. Believed in the organization we had, and you do let your mind wander. You do think this is a team that could win a Stanley Cup. Maybe not this particular year, I didn't think that. But got a good group of players in there, and they've been through a lot, even though they're young, and they have a lot of character.
You know, we just got them focused in a different direction. I think the game is meant to be played aggressively and in-your-face. When you can dictate the pace of the game and where it's played, you can put teams back on their heels. That's a fun way to play, and that's, I think, the right way to play.
I'm a little surprised how quick they bought in and how quick they got it. But I'm not surprised how good they became.

Q. Max Talbot has become a Detroit killer. Talk about his performance in this series and particularly tonight. And then secondly how difficult was it for you when something unexpected like Sid's injury occurred and how you had to adjust midstream to what had to be a lot of line juggling?
COACH BYLSMA: Yeah, Max Talbot, I don't have a good explanation about why this guy can come up big in tough situations or big games, but he's done it enough to know that's what he can do.
He's gritty, he's determined, and he's not scared to, you know, to go after it. Good job on the forecheck, great turnover created by Geno. I didn't even see that first one go in.
But, again, he got an opportunity on the two-on-one. I did see that one go in. That one felt good. It's kind of -- we said it when we started the playoffs, if your team plays well enough as a team and everyone has a chance to put the cape on and certainly Max put the cape on tonight.

Q. And Sid's?
COACH BYLSMA: His injury. I anticipate him to, you know, maybe he could have played a little more. But the juggling of the lines -- it's not odd. In the American League, you know, I've coached with three lines, 11 forwards before, 10 forwards before. So it's a shorter bench, but you know, we just moved Jordan into Sid's spot on that line. And moved Max off Geno's line, and put him as a center between Cooke and Kennedy, and it seemed to go pretty good.

Q. We always focus when we talk about your team on your captain. The next one, he's been preordained before he came to Pittsburgh to do something like this. Can you talk about what you feel it means to have Sidney live up to the expectations, to be able to hoist the Stanley Cup?
COACH BYLSMA: It's not an easy thing to do. And it's not easy to win the Stanley Cup. It's not easy to be in the spotlight like he is at a young age, almost, like you said, preordained. It's difficult. There's lots of focus. There's lots of scrutiny. There's lots of demands.
He's a great player, and he's a determined player. But to kind of evolve and get the Stanley Cup, I think it's, you know, for him and Geno and Flower, too, there's a lot of scrutiny about these guys and a lot of question marks about these guys at different times. Hopefully this erases some of those questions for a lot of people, because these kids earned it. Not just because they're good players. They earned it because they sacrificed and they battled and they worked and they're playing as a team. They've learned, they've grown, and in a very short time period early in their career, they got a Cup.

Q. Yesterday you were talking about the emotions of whether winning as a coach, winning as a player, you didn't know how that would feel. Does this replace that void that was left by not winning at a player? And do you think now you'll be able to watch other teams celebrate championships?
COACH BYLSMA: (Laughing) I definitely will now. And it definitely does fill the void. I think you compete to get the most out of yourself and the team. And it's the great thing about sports. The competition, the improvement, coming together as a team to win. To have been a runner-up three times, I haven't won something other than my son in knee hockey in the basement. I haven't won a lot of things since I was in high school. You know, it elevates your career to a different level. It's a lot of dreaming and a lot of hard work, and a lot of determination. When you lift that Cup, that trophy, the Stanley Cup Champion will go by your name forever.

Q. Was that about as well as you guys could execute the blueprint? And when you see a game like that unfold, did you get a sense early on your guys were making the right decisions? Their focus was where it needs to be? It's going to play out. You don't know if you're going to win, but you know you're going to play well and compete.
COACH BYLSMA: To be honest, that first period I was pretty anxious. You know, they came out, they didn't get a lot of shots with their first couple of shifts. They chased down that icing, they had some momentum. The building was going, and we hadn't quite gotten to the execution level in areas where we needed to.
Then the latter half of the period we did. I think we outshot them by a couple or three or four in the first. I got the sense that, okay, we've settled into the game. We've started to do some of the things that we need to do to try to tip the scales in our favor.
Again, I think probably the best thing we did was on the forecheck and being able to create turnovers. In a lot of the games that first goal was an indication of that. Just that. Getting that first goal, I thought was huge. I didn't see that one go in, but I saw the second one go in. When that one went in you start to change your focus to, all right, we just got to manage the puck here and battle this one out and play our game and we've got a chance.
The guys did an amazing job because they were coming hard. And there were some flurries and the guys battled and blocked shots. Even right up to the end. I can't wait to see the replay. I don't know if Flower made a save on that last one or not. But oh wee.

Q. You mentioned the Crosby injury and learning through the AHL how to play a lot of lines and juggle things. He looked like he was in a great deal of pain. What was your initial thought? You had things going your way when that happened and when did you learn you were going to get him back?
COACH BYLSMA: The initial report that I got, I didn't get it very soon. Abbott, our trainer was in there working on him. He had an injury that it's a possibility that he could play with. He couldn't damage it any further. So there was a chance he was going to come back. We got through the period and talked again. It was let's see if we can get you out there. You kind of go from there. Tell me if you think you can go.
Thought maybe I'd get him out for a couple more shifts than I did. But as the clock wound down, we had some long shifts and periods where we didn't get a stoppage of play. Really kind of wanted to put him out in the offensive zone to prevent him from forcing them to play in the "D" zone right away. That didn't happen. You look up and we've got 4:00 minutes left, 3 minutes left in the stoppage of play. I just felt we had it going with the lines we had and didn't need to put him in that situation.

Q. I just wondered, what is your feeling about everything that's happened to you this year? Mid February, you know, you take over as coach and four months later you go to Stanley Cup?
COACH BYLSMA: Life's a bugger (laughing). You know, I had plans about this. I had dreams about this. I hoped this would happen some day. But good coaches have coached a long time and never gotten an opportunity like this. A lot of times your first opportunity doesn't come with a team that's this talented or this group of players. I'm very fortunate in that regard. Very fortunate the staff, you know, Mike Yeo and Tom Fitzgerald, and Gilles Meloche and Ray Shero for allowing us and trusting us. Trusting this young coach and first time coach. And Tom Fitzgerald to take a direction and guide his team. I feel tremendously fortunate. I felt it numerous times along the way here that this team is going to be good.
Did we have enough time to do it, that was the question mark in my brain. I didn't really try to think about that too much. It was just about getting to play certain ways and winning the games. But really fortunate how life changes in such a short period of time, you know.
I'll take the opportunity. I believed I worked hard enough and was prepared for the opportunity. And, again, fortunate with such a good group of guys and a support staff, amazing story.

Q. When you look at just how young the core group of players you have here is, is it exciting to think that this could really be the start of something special?
COACH BYLSMA: That's a great thought. That's a great thought, and it's a dream, you know. But there's a lot of hard work and building and laying a foundation every year that goes into every year. It doesn't happen without building that foundation on day one and day two. They just don't hand you a trip to the Stanley Cup Finals again the second year. So we're going to enjoy this one. We're going to sit back and relish the moment. We're going to get our names put on that Cup, and we'll all get our day with that, and what that means to us. In short order, I'm sure, come September we'll get ready to start building the foundation again for what this team could possibly do. But that's a whole different thing right now. We're going to enjoy this one.

End of FastScripts

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