	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

NHL HERITAGE CLASSIC: CANADIENS v FLAMES

February 20, 2011

Brent Sutter

CALGARY, ALBERTA

MODERATOR: Questions for Coach.

Q. With the exception of maybe ten minutes or so in the second period, it was a pretty solid effort by your team. How would you rate what you did? Not much different than was the case the last 10 or 15 games?
COACH SUTTER: I thought we played well. You know, real compliment to the guys for holding their focus the way they have the last few days. And you know in situations like this, it can get away with you on this with everything else going on. But they were handling everything professional, very focused. Obviously they know the situation our team is in.
We had one thing in mind today was to come here and play well and give ourselves a chance to succeed. It didn't matter where we were playing a game, we need to play a certain way.
And I thought we just played a real, real good game. Even you mentioned ten minutes there, we were still fine. We were under control with ourselves. They started putting a lot of pucks on net which they used the conditions outside to, they were with the wind then.
But Kipr handled it well. I thought Kipr was sharp. I thought we had a real solid effort from everybody.

Q. Rene Bourque. Two goals tonight and now he's got six points in your last three games. Is he back to where he was in the first three weeks of the regular season?
COACH SUTTER: I think Bourque, the last few games, you're starting to see some real good signs with just his energy level, the way he skates and his strength along the boards. Shooting the puck. Going to the net. You look at his goal tonight where he took the puck to the net.
He's been finding his way with it. And he's coming. And we really obviously we need Bourque and we need Bourque to be a good player for us. And he's gone through some tough times. But he's coming out of it. And that's a good sign for us.

Q. Darryl, when you say Kiprusoff was outstanding tonight, maybe just talk a little bit about his play as well.
COACH SUTTER: For starters, it's Brent, not Darryl.

Q. Sorry.
COACH SUTTER: Mikka was outstanding. He was very focused. Again, he's been playing extremely well. Pucks are hitting him, hitting him in the chest and he's doing a good job.

Q. You've had just every experience a guy could have in the sport. I want to know how you enjoyed everything now that you can probably for a couple of seconds breathe and relax and have the two points and reflect a little bit?
COACH SUTTER: You know what, it was great to be part of it. And, again, it was as a coach you don't want it to get away on you as far as your team losing focus. But like I said earlier, it's a real credit to the guys, they kept it and held it for the last few days.
And we want to enjoy it, and we have. We want to have fun with it. And we did. But we knew at 4:00 today we needed to be ready to play. And today was a game day and the guys were very focused when they came in here today and ready to play.
And I felt good before the game. You have a sense of your team and I could tell it was a focused group.

Q. Brent, just kind of to that point, there might have been a time where you would have really had to have kept your eye and to make sure that the focus was there and double and triple check. Are you past that point now? The phase in this team that maybe you didn't have, do you have that now?
COACH SUTTER: Well, again, to have success any team to have success there's got to be a huge trust factor and again we've been through tough times earlier in the year and up to mid December and we really started finding our game in mid December, but through the tough times I've said this before, the guys stuck shoulder to shoulder with it and stayed with it and the biggest thing was just we believe we can get it done but really stay together here and - everyone, through and through. And the guys have responded really well from it.
But as a coach, you absolutely - you need to have complete faith and trust in your players as they do in their head coach and coaching staff and management trainers everybody and right through the whole organization, right from top to bottom. And very important. Because it gets filtered into the room. When the players see it and they believe it, some really good things can happen.

Q. You mentioned focus. You've been keying on it a lot. Is this something with the streak and with different things that could be detrimental, you could say to the focus where you had the big streak and then the All-Star game and you had this come on, with all the distractions that can happen, do you think that's something that's beneficial, moving forward, and on the way to the Playoffs, being able to maintain your focus through all this stuff helps out a lot?
COACH SUTTER: You know, adversity, we've been through a lot of it this year. And we've learned from it. I think we've grown as a group.
You don't see inside of an individual really what an individual is always through good times, you see it through tough times.
And I think we really have seen a lot of each other through the tough times we went through up until mid-December. And yet we stayed strong, like I said. And the adversity we dealt with, we've handled well. But, again, we know there's a lot of work left to be done.
We've got a long ways to go here still and we just need to keep getting better and that's our focus as a group, let's continue to get better and let's continue to do the things we need to do and let's continue to stick together as a team and let's play well and that's what we've been doing and we've given ourselves a chance every night. That's the most important thing. That's all you can ask for as coaches, as part of the head coaching coaching staff, is for any of the players to go out there and play hard and do it the right way and let's do it up.

End of FastScripts

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297