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NHL EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: CANADIENS v FLYERSMay 21, 2010Peter LavioletteMONTREAL, QUEBEC: Practice Day Q. A lot of guys, after the loss last night, said that they hope this is a wake-up call. It needs to be a wake-up call. Did you get a sense of maybe some extra sense of urgency out of practice today or different mindset, that the guys are maybe refocused a little bit? COACH LAVIOLETTE: It seemed crisp to me at practice. You know, you have meetings, there is always a lot said. When you don't play the way you're expected to play, everybody expects to play better. So you get kicked around like you did last night, there is usually more attention. Q. At the end of the game, when they had their best unit out there and best power play unit in a game that's already been decided, as a coach, does that leave something in your mind that will be remembered the rest of the Series? Do you think that was a message that they were sending? COACH LAVIOLETTE: I don't know. I can't comment on what they're doing. Obviously, we noticed it. Q. Bothered you? COACH LAVIOLETTE: I can't control what they do. That's their decision. We sent our penalty killers out there. We didn't kill the penalty. Q. Mike and Danny both talked about some of the bitter feelings that are developing between the teams in this Series. Can that be a good thing for you guys? COACH LAVIOLETTE: I think so. We can use that. I think when you bring aggression into it and physical play, and all that leads to -- you don't want to be on discipline, but certainly it can lead to better intensity in the battles, I mean, your skating and harder hits. You know, we need to be better in all those areas than we were last night. Q. Getting back to practice today. It did seem crisp, as you said. Was that your intention coming into today to have a long, hard practice like that as a function of what happened in last night's game, or do those things just occur? Do these players just come and play with that kind of intensity at practice? COACH LAVIOLETTE: I don't think practice was that long. It was probably, for what we ran anyway, it was probably about 20 minutes or so. That's a typical practice for us, and typically it's at that pace. But I do believe that what you're both saying is correct. There was an added element of an edge out there. Q. I know last night you talked about it just being one game. But when you lose a game like that, is it easy to kind of lose sight of the fact that you still have a lead in the Series? COACH LAVIOLETTE: Well, the game was bad. I don't want to dismiss the game. You know what I mean? The Playoffs you have to continually move on. You have to leave the good and the bad behind. I think you can learn from both. Certainly we take lessons from last night on what we can do better and what we need to do better in order to be successful. We'll go out and practice today. It's a new day today. We need to dial in and focus on tomorrow and make sure we play a much better game than we did. Q. Chris Pronger is now, he's 35 years. He's played 82 games, played the Olympics, played the Playoffs. How do you monitor his ice time as you get into this? Any differently than what you normally do? COACH LAVIOLETTE: Not really from a game point. We had a big lead in Game 1, we shut them down at 8 minutes to go. Practices, pregame skates, he's taken some off recently. But he wants to be out there too. When we practice, he practices hard. He was out there today charging away, and that's the type of person he is. He's very professional. There's not a lot left. You've got to keep your eye on the ball. You've got to keep moving. I think he's -- while the minutes get up there, I think sometimes you'd rather keep going than to slow down or take time off. It's almost like you seize up a little bit. You'd rather just keep staying in the moment, in the game. But certainly he has the right to take some time off when he needs it, and he has taken a couple practices off. Q. A number of your players have been saying since Game 1 we haven't played our best game yet, we're not playing our best yet. As you get to Game 4, is it time now? You guys got to play your best hockey at this point, wouldn't you think? COACH LAVIOLETTE: Well, I don't think the intention is ever to go into a game and throw out the C-game. We want to play our best game every night. For all professional sports, sometimes that happens and sometimes it doesn't. It didn't happen for us tonight. Like I said, the only thing we can do is meet about it, address some issues, make some changes, go out and practice like we did, change our attitude, probably the biggest change we need to make, and get ready to play. Q. There is a big difference in going home up 3-1 and going home at 2-2. How badly do you guys need to take one in their building tomorrow? COACH LAVIOLETTE: I don't know if you're going to find a coach that sits up here when it's 3-0 and say, well, if it gets to six it will be okay. You know what I mean? The objective is to win four games and to do it as quickly and efficiently as you can. Tomorrow night we have an opportunity. Yes, we want to go home 3-1. We do not want to go home 2-2. There is a lot of work that has to be done in that process, but that is the nature of the way this tournament and the Playoffs are set up. You've got to win four games every round. Most teams would like to do it 4-0. That rarely happens. Usually you've got to fight. You've got to live with the good ones, you've got to live with the bad one, and you've got to keep moving on and secure four and move on to the next round. Q. From what you've seen of Ian Laperriere, is he close to 100%? Just what you see in practice? Would he have made a difference last night? COACH LAVIOLETTE: That's hard for me to answer that question. I mean, if you're asking me if I would have liked to have had a healthy Ian Laperriere in the lineup last night, yeah, I would have. He's an excellent player, does a lot of things for us. He's an inspirational guy, and he looked good in practice. Q. You just said a moment ago that the biggest change you need to make is attitude. Can you just elaborate on that a little bit? COACH LAVIOLETTE: I think attitude a lot of times determines -- there are a lot of different ways to word it, attitude, desperation, drive. But our attitude was a little more crisp today. They seemed to catch our attention last night. We were a little crisper on the ice, and that attitude, you can build on that through the night right up until game time tomorrow and take a much different approach to the game. Q. You have some players who can get pretty animated out on the ice. I think Cammalleri and Lapierre were doing some talking. Is that something you want your players to stay away from? Is it something you'd rather see or not see? COACH LAVIOLETTE: I really don't care what Cammalleri and -- who was the other player? Q. Lapierre. COACH LAVIOLETTE: Oh, I don't really care what they do. I care about our players and what we do. Usually if you're initiating in a game -- usually if you're initiating, you're on the other side of that. They were initiating. We were responding to them. That's the difference last night. End of FastScripts |
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