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NHL STANLEY CUP FINALS: FLYERS v BLACKHAWKSMay 28, 2010Mike RichardsCHICAGO, ILLINOIS: Practice Day Q. When a coaching change is made, quite often just the coaching change is good. Beyond that, how is Peter able to get you guys to buy in as fast as he did at this point? MIKE RICHARDS: I don't know if it worked initially. Peter's system is very aggressive, and it almost took us a month, maybe two months, to figure it out, where you're doing things second nature and you don't have to think about it very much. And you're just pretty much playing instead of thinking it. But once we got it down, it's obviously an effective system. It's pressure all over the ice. And you need to be in great shape to do it. So since he's taken over, he's got us in a lot better shape and obviously playing a system that we have success with. Q. Having just briefly played with Toews in the Olympics how much has that changed as you go head to head against them in this series and what's the biggest challenge against him? MIKE RICHARDS: He's competitive. Very competitive. He's tenacious on the puck. And sometimes the skill level may kind of go beyond the wayside. You don't think of it too much just because of how hard he works. But he's kind of a jack-of-all-trades sort of guy. He can do everything very well, and obviously a player that we have to be very hard on. Q. The last time you guys had some time off, you guys struggled in that Boston series. Do you worry about any of that here; or is this a completely different scenario, you had a lot of time off heading into this Stanley Cup Final? MIKE RICHARDS: Not a lot of time off, if you look at the schedule. We might have had a day off, and then with the travel yesterday, it was everything happened pretty quick. So I don't really see that. I think the rest was a good amount. Just to get our legs back, get us back in it, and I think just in a matter of it being the Finals, it's going to be exciting. So I don't really see our team having any let-downs. Q. How do you view this matchup, the Flyers against the Chicago Blackhawks? And for the Flyers to win the Stanley Cup, what will be, in your mind, the key for them winning the series? MIKE RICHARDS: I don't know. We'll have to play consistent hockey and play them for 60 minutes and maybe it takes seven games. But we obviously have confidence in our team and the system that we play. We're going to have to play extremely well defense against them and not worry and not try to get into a track meet with them and create chances. But if you look on paper, the teams are very evenly matched. Very evenly built, I think, same sort of design of players, too. So it's just who is going to play the most consistent for the longest. Q. Mike, you've beaten three excellent goalies so far to get here. How important is it to get to Niemi and get in his craw, so to speak, because he's never faced this kind of thing before? MIKE RICHARDS: We're going to get pucks to the net. We're going to shoot as much as possible. We're going to get our bigger bodies in front of them to try to distract them a little bit. And I think what we did well in the Montreal series is get pucks into the feet and try to bang away at them. And we have good shooters, too. But it's the gritty goals that are going to give us success and getting pucks to the net and not trying to make the pretty play too much. Q. Blackhawks captain Jonathan Toews has been very complementary of your play. I know you guys were linemates during the Olympics probably the most effective line for Team Canada. How do you view Jonathan Toews as Blackhawks captain, what thoughts come to mind when you think of him not only as an adversary during this series, but as a teammate during the Olympics? MIKE RICHARDS: All along, for the last week -- I've got so much respect for him the way he approaches the game. I mean, he's hockey 24/7. He's obviously a leader. He's tenacious on the ice. And he's just non-stop. He makes his linemates better and doing so he makes his teammates better. Not the loudest guy but a guy that's not afraid to say something when I was with him for the short while. The confidence that he has in himself, I think it just brushes off on some of his teammates, too. So obviously going to be a great battle, a battle that I look forward to. And I mean it's going to be fun. I would put him up with one of the best players in the world. End of FastScripts |
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