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NHL EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: LIGHTNING v BRUINS

May 17, 2011

Guy Boucher

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS: Game Two

Boston Â– 6
Tampa Bay - 5

THE MODERATOR: We're joined by Guy Boucher. Questions.

Q. The players use the word structure a lot during the postgame interviews. What happened with the structure tonight?
GUY BOUCHER: Well, to be honest with you, it was a pawn hockey game tonight, period. When you play a pawn hockey game, there's a chance it won't turn your way. So it's your breakaway, my breakaway, your two-on-ones, my two-on-one. It might be exciting for the fans, but from the team's perspective and standpoint, it's not how we've played. And when the other team is that hungry, you can't let that happen. And we didn't.
And we could have come back. We always do in the third period. We're known for that. And one or two goals, you always come back, but three, it's a lot. We could have them. We missed some open nets there.
Even if we would have won that game, we certainly wouldn't have been happy with the way we played.

Q. It's so consistent in the structure, are you surprised that it wasn't there at all throughout most of this game, if not the entire game?
GUY BOUCHER: It's not that it wasn't there at all. It's that you've got some or two or three minutes and all of a sudden you've got somebody that's usually very reliable, all of a sudden do things that we don't normally do. That's surprising. But I mean it's been eight games. So if that's not consistency, I don't know what it is. At some point there's a possibility that you're going to have one of those games, and we had one today.
If we got another eight games, with our structure and consistency after, I don't think we'll be crying. But the reality is after eight games of playing solid, structured and tense and doing things down to the T, there's bound at some point to have something that's going to be a little different.

Q. Boston doesn't like to play that pawn hockey style either. Are you surprised it turned into that up against a team like Boston?
GUY BOUCHER: Well, you've got two great goaltenders, 6-5 game, I don't think anybody was predicting that. You've got two teams that have played tight defense in the Playoffs. So I don't think anybody was expecting that.
But what everybody was expecting was going to be a tight series and it's 1-1, and so I think in the games certainly it represents what everybody was expecting, including ourselves, and I think they're going to be better next game, and we certainly have to be better because it wasn't pretty at moments.
Having said that, we still scored five goals. There are things we did, we could have scored more. Probably turning points, second period, it's 2-1 for us, we get a breakaway, Marty St. Louis puts it over the net, turn around, they get their breakaway and they score. Instead of 3-1 it's 2-2. And then after that breakaway again we missed. They don't miss their breakaway. You get a two-on-one. We missed the two-on-one. They don't miss their two-on-one.
So either way it seemed like it was going to be a weird game. So I want to make sure we're not that weird for the next game.

Q. You guys to this point have won every game. You scored first in the Playoffs. Obviously this game is an anomaly, more wide open, most games are, how do you bounce back and get right into the next game?
GUY BOUCHER: Whether we score the first goal or don't score the first goal doesn't change anything for us. We're supposed to stick to our plan. And our players have been great at it. And we've reloaded many times. It was one-on-one, and we lost the two games at home in the first series and came back, so we know how to do it.
Now it's a question of making sure we pay attention to details and that we're ready in front of our fans to play our best. Certainly wasn't our best tonight. They played hard. But we have to be better. It was a one goal game again.

Q. Could you talk a little bit about Roloson, do you think he was just overwhelmed in the net with all the different looks he got, or do you think he was ordinary tonight? And during the year, he's been very resilient at coming off a loss to winning. So what do you expect out of him next game?
GUY BOUCHER: Same thing. That's exactly what he is. He's resilient. He's somebody that's got tremendous concentration. And you know he always bounces back. So we're not expecting anything less than what he's given us throughout the year. So I'm not worried.
I'm not looking for new ways to give some tools for our goaltender to rebound. He's got the tools. He knows how to do it. He's done it. We're not going to mess with it.
Tonight I thought in the first period he was great. If you look at the five-on-three, he was tremendous. And I think that five-on-three with one second left, made a mistake on him. Nobody was there to front the shots so we didn't help him on that one.
And if we kill that, it's a different story, probably. And we get some kind of momentum off of it. But we got the goal back. It was 2-1 after the first period. We got that goal back. I think just in the second period is let's throw a puck on the ice on the pond and so we didn't help them there.

Q. The Bruins controlled play for much of the first, you go into intermission with the lead. What were your thoughts going to the break and did you think you were going to settle things down after that?
GUY BOUCHER: Well, we knew what we did wrong in the first period. And we knew exactly what we did wrong after the second period. As you can see in the third period, we came back a lot better. Started to look a lot like ourselves and created ourselves some chances and came back by two goals and certainly could have had one, two, or even three more goals in the third period. And I'm thinking of their missing open nets and nice saves. That could've gone in. And Bergeron at the end of 6-5 has got the open net. And same thing with Moore.
So there's opportunities there. But like I said, you know what, those games, I said it all year long, we don't want to win those games, because it makes you -- it gives you the sense -- a false sense of having accomplished something when your process wasn't good.
So they deserved the game, and we don't, and period, that's it.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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