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NHL WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: BLACKHAWKS v SHARKS

May 23, 2010

Jonathan Toews

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS: Game Four

SCHUYLER BAEHMAN: Questions for Jonathan.

Q. You didn't touch the trophy. Did you even look at it?
JONATHAN TOEWS: Yeah, caught my eye there. Kind of shiny. Yeah, didn't need to touch it, pick it up.

Q. People talk all the time that you have to lose in order to learn how to win. What was the number one thing you took from last year's Western Conference finals that helped you this year in?
JONATHAN TOEWS: Well, the number one thing is any team in that position thinks that they can win. When you get to the Conference Finals, you still feel like you're really close to winning it all, you know. It was really disappointing to lose like we did against Detroit. I think that was enough.
Yeah, it was a long year. It was a long time getting back to that point. But that feeling was definitely pretty fresh in our minds. You saw it in this series, we were ready to go. We brought it every single night. We gave ourselves a chance to win every single game.

Q. Three years ago when you stepped on the ice as a rookie in this league, if someone would have told you you would be in the Cup Final three years later, what would have been your reaction?
JONATHAN TOEWS: I would have felt pretty nervous that I had a lot to live up to.
At this point it doesn't come as any surprise to myself or anybody else in our locker room. We know what we can do as a team. Last year, we felt we were very close, like I said, but just didn't have enough in us. We were young. Obviously that inexperience did catch up to us a little bit.
To us, there's no surprise that we're back here. You know, we're excited about winning this series, whether it was in four games or seven games. It's a good feeling to go on to the next round and keep playing hockey. Doesn't really matter how you do it. You want to find a way. That's what we did.
Tonight being down 2-0, still found a way to win. We knew it wasn't over. Just kept working. It says a lot about our team right there. Win or lose, there's always things we can take away from each game and we're going to keep getting better.

Q. Talk about Buff. I'm assuming you and Patrick don't mind giving up a goal a game to Buff.
JONATHAN TOEWS: Yeah, as a line, you know, doesn't matter who is scoring goals, especially the big goals. We're working hard. And tonight we had the puck a lot in the first two periods and didn't get anything to show for it. You know, Buff is always in front of the net. You know where to find him.
You know, it was a good pass by Kane. A couple times couldn't pull the trigger. Kane threw it at the net. Sure enough, there he is to bang home the game winner again. He knows how to get open, how to create space for the two of us. He's been great.
You know, it's not like he's getting lucky or he's on a string of great games. He's working hard. You know, if one of us on our line has an off night, things aren't going to work for us, we're all working hard for our scoring chances right now.

Q. Can you revisit the Campbell Trophy thing? Did you think in advance you weren't going to touch it? Do you respect the superstitions?
JONATHAN TOEWS: Well, I mean, Sharp was the one who brought it to my attention before the game. I actually hadn't thought about it at all. He asked me if I had any plans for after the game. I told someone before that I thought he was talking about dinner plans or something like that (laughter). I hadn't thought about it at all.
You know, I think in my mind, if it ever got to this point, I think I knew that as a captain, to me it's not a superstitious thing. Some teams are all onboard with grabbing the trophy and saying, you know, the heck with it. But to me it's not being superstitious. It's just saying that we're here for bigger and better things. We're just happy about winning this round and moving on. That's what it's all about.
We're happy about that, and we got nothing to celebrate, no reason to accept any hardware yet because it's meaningless to us.

Q. Three rounds, three wins. Now you're in the final. How much better can this team still be and how much better will it have to be to finish the job?
JONATHAN TOEWS: Sky's the limit. We know we can still be better. We're going to keep pushing ourselves. That's how you kind of take the pressure off each other, is you keep working on little things. You know, we're going to have fun doing it. This is a great opportunity, a great chance. You know, nothing's holding us back. We're going to go right after it, enjoy doing it as a team. Doing it for each other. Firing on all cylinders. No reason we can't go out there and get another four wins.

Q. Nashville, tough series. Vancouver, probably not as tough. San Jose in four. Do you feel, as a team, do you sort of put that impression on the rest of the players that it's getting easier because you're getting better and better and better?
JONATHAN TOEWS: I don't think it's getting easier at all. Maybe it looks like that. Of course, your first impression for any outsider is, yeah, you win four games in a row, it must have been just a cruise. But it absolutely wasn't. You know, there was no blow-outs. No 4-1, 5-1 games. Every game was close. We worked for every inch.
You know, I think the biggest difference between this series and the series against, say, Vancouver was that we didn't have any off nights. Maybe we had a couple iffy starts, some nights where we took more penalties than we wanted to, got ourselves in tight. But we stuck with it and we found ways. We worked hard.
It's a 60-minute game. You saw that tonight, that even though we're trailing through 30 minutes, it's far from over. So we stuck with it, found a way to win. I think the four games in a row doesn't show how tough the series really was.
SCHUYLER BAEHMAN: Thank you very much.
JONATHAN TOEWS: Thank you.

End of FastScripts

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