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NHL AWARDS CEREMONY

June 23, 2010

Dave Tippett

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

Jack Adams Award

Q. How good does it feel now that it's finally officially yours?
DAVE TIPPETT: Well, it's very gratifying, I think for our organization. I'm very happy for our coaching staff. You know, we were a team that nobody gave much of a chance at the start of the year, and we used that adversity as a motivating factor throughout our whole group right from Doug moss and his staff to Don Maloney and the hockey operations staff to our players.
In the end, we probably did a lot more than people thought, but in Phoenix we think it's just the start of putting the foundation in place that we want to build there.

Q. How do you get your players to believe and do what you wanted them to do when you came in?
DAVE TIPPETT: You know, I think all the adversity with nobody giving us much chance to do anything made them a very coachable group. They were guys that were really wanting to -- had a lot to prove, and we came in with some pretty simple things that we were going to ask them to do and how they were going to play. I thought the strengths of our team were our ability to defend and our goaltending, and we game planned around that.
When we started to have some early success, I think the players really recognized that this could work for us. So we've talked about it there before. We went into Pittsburgh the second game of the year and shut out the defending Stanley Cup champions. And in that game, I know the players were looking at each other going we can do this.
It's a process to become a team where you expect to win and not just to hope to win. But I think we took some good steps in that direction.

Q. How about winning the award? How do you feel yourself getting the award? I know it's a team effort.
DAVE TIPPETT: It's very gratifying, it's very gratifying. You know, coaches in today's NHL put a lot of time and a lot of energy and a lot of emotion into this to get recognized. I look at it as a coaching staff award for our staff to get recognized, it's very gratifying.

Q. Do you worry about following up next year? I mean, sometimes for a team that takes a step forward and then maybe backslide? Do you have concerned about being able to sort of build as opposed to settling back?
DAVE TIPPETT: Our concerns are we want to get better, but it's probably no different than 29 other teams. When you take as big a step as we did last year, there are certainly those concerns. But I think what we've done is we've put a good foundation in place, and we recognize how we have to play to be successful. If we come out and continue to do those same things, I think our ability to win hockey games will be the same.

Q. Is there anything about hockey and Phoenix in general that you'd like people to know after all you've seen happen this year?
DAVE TIPPETT: Well, it's amazing that I almost put our fans in the same boat as our organization and as our players where there are a lot of fans in Phoenix that use the adversity to motivate them. If you look at our building the last month of the season in the playoffs, it was one of the most fun buildings in the league.
So from that end, the fans that hung in there with us, and the new fans that we generate throughout the year, it's a very positive thing for the organization.

Q. Do you have a chance to meet the new owners tonight maybe if they're around?
DAVE TIPPETT: Yeah, I hope so, we'll see.

Q. Your joke about the owners, did you write that yourself?
DAVE TIPPETT: Yeah (laughing). Well, I thought somebody asked me that the other day. Said, well what are you going to say if you win it? And I said, well, most people probably go up and thank their owner, but I don't know all 29 of them. So in lieu of that, probably Gary Bettman and Bill Daly.
No, that's part of the adversity that we dealt with all year. It's a different, unique kind of adversity, but I think our group handled it very well.

Q. Do you have a message for the fans back in Phoenix?
DAVE TIPPETT: Just that we're going to continue to improve, continue to try to push forward with what we started last year, and we hope to have a lot more fun next year.

End of FastScripts

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