	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 EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: LIGHTNING v BRUINS

May 23, 2011

Guy Boucher

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS: Game Five

Q. Is Dwayne Roloson going to be your starting goalie tonight?
COACH BOUCHER: We're preparing like usual. He's preparing like he prepared for all the other games. So we're prepared.

Q. Why will you not just say for sure whether he's going to start or not? Is there a competitive advantage not to say, yes, he will be our starter?
COACH BOUCHER: He's prepared. He got out. He's done his morning skate like usual. He's prepared yesterday. We had a good talk. And he knows what's coming up.

Q. Can you update Steve Downie, he appeared on the ice?
COACH BOUCHER: I'd love to update you. I need to talk to my -- he was doing better this morning. That's the one update I can tell you. But before he had gone on the ice, he had done better. But I need to see how he feels right now, and they said half an hour after he's gone off the ice, I need to go back to my therapist and see how he's doing.

Q. So there's a chance he could play tonight, then?
COACH BOUCHER: He's doing better this morning. But better and ready to go, doesn't necessarily mean that it's the same thing. But at least it's better. So there's something positive -- and Tyrell, same thing. He was sick last game. Couldn't play much. So today -- and yesterday he was much better. And today he's fine.
So if he sits down, he's not playing. Tyrell's ready to go and Blair Jones will be in the lineup if he's not. So that's who we're going to go with.

Q. What have you guys done, Game 3 notwithstanding, to be so effective offensively against Tim Thomas, especially when you look at the regular season? Statistically he had one of the best seasons ever by a goaltender.
COACH BOUCHER: I don't think we were that effective against him. He shut us out. And he's won the other games. So I think he's done very well for his team. He's a very confident goaltender. You can see from his comments yesterday. He said that they were going to win for sure, so you can see how confident he is.
And we've had some good moments, but we've had some ones where it didn't pan out for us, and we're expecting him to be at his best tonight.
So certainly not ready to say that we've done very well against him. If we had done very well against him, we'd be up in this series, so we haven't.

Q. It's the best of three series now. Obviously Boston has home ice advantage with two of those games. But you guys seem to laugh in the face of that, winning six out of seven past games on the road. What is the key to you guys doing so well on the road and carrying it through to tonight?
COACH BOUCHER: Well, I think it's not just us. I think it's throughout the NHL. Teams have a bit more trouble winning at home this year than previous years. And I think probably it's the pressure of doing well in front of your fans and not wanting to disappoint, I think, is probably the focus of a lot of the players going into these games.
And you try to talk about it. You try to prepare for it. But the entire year, you tell your players that you don't want to disappoint your fans. And then you come into the Playoffs, it's something that you built throughout the entire year, that mentality of doing it right at home and getting everybody to perform at their best, because people pay to come and see you play.
And so when you get to the Playoffs, you still have that in mind, that you want to perform for your fans, which puts a bit more pressure. Since in the Playoffs you always have more pressure, more emotion, it's probably a little harder to manage.

Q. We talked so much about Victor Hedman taking so many steps forward in the last little while. I was curious, the last game or so, what you've seen from him, if he's kind of maintained that upward arc or maybe flattened out a little bit.
COACH BOUCHER: No, he hasn't flattened out. What happened as a youngster, you know, he plays amazing when he doesn't try to push the offense. When the offense comes to him, he's playing really well. But when he's pushing the offense, it's not working out for him. In the first period of the last game he was trying to push it, and he created a few turnovers.
And what I liked is the fact that we didn't sit him on the bench, and we didn't bring him down even further. I think Dan Lacroix taking care of defense men, did a very good job with him of calming him down. And he was terrific the second and third period and he was part of the goals that we got back.
So I think in his case, the entire year, it's about managing expectations, that when you're drafted that high, people are expecting a lot of offense from you. And I think the type of player he is, he's just beginning to figure out who he is in the NHL. And it's not a run-and-gun offensive guy. It's a guy that's going to be able to do it all and be solid at all aspects of the game. Therefore that means consistency.
Right now he's learning how to get consistency as a 20-year-old. And I would say the last three months of the season he was great. In the Playoffs he's really surprised us, because I was expecting a real nervous young guy that would be difficult to manage, and hasn't been that except for a few instances. So he's been terrific for us.

Q. With this down to a best of three, is it hard not to get caught up in the what-ifs and trying to stay in the now and not look forward to what could happen?
COACH BOUCHER: Well, I hear best of three, but I never have that in my mind. It's one game, it's tonight. It's the first five minutes of tonight. That's how I always take it. I never get further than that.
If people are trying to get me further than that, I stop them pretty quick.

Q. When a young player comes in and has the type of impact that Tyler Seguin has, as a coach, what do you do to kind of make him make adjustments in order to kind of shut him down a little bit?
COACH BOUCHER: Well, I'll be honest with you, we felt he's played really well. But if you're going to focus on him, then you're not going to focus on the other guys, and they're the ones that are going to get you.
So the reality is there's too many good players on that team. They've got a terrific team with a lot of guys who can make the difference. So if you start focusing on one guy in particular, you're going to focus on the wrong thing.
So we're aware he's got speed. And the rest, we play them like we play everybody else.
You got Krejci on the ice, if you just focus on him, Lucic is going to score and Horton is going to score. So we did the same thing with Washington. If you just focus on Ovechkin, the other guys would have done the job.
So it's a real team thing. It's always been our attitude. And it's everybody's job to play against anybody that's in front of them. Sometimes we match, but most of the time we trust our fourth line, third line guys to do the job, and I think that's one of the reasons why today they're helping us offensively, too, is that they were allowed to score goals during the year, they're allowed to think that they can get on the second and third and first line when they play better on the first and second liners.
So whether we play against Seguin that's playing really well or other guys, it's a team defense that we've played all year long. So we're not going to change that.

Q. Larry Jones is a guy who has been in and out, mostly out. But when he does have to go in, he does seem to give you some good minutes. What's been your take on him? What have been your expectations of him?
COACH BOUCHER: Well, when you get a guy from the American League coming up, first thing I think any coach -- now I've figured it out as an NHLer, is that you need a guy that's reliable. It's not a league for development. It's a league for performance. You've got to be able to perform now and start by not hurting your team. And then, second, contributing defensively and offensively after.
And in his case, the minute he came in for the first games he played with us, you can see he's got a lot of grit. He pays the price in all areas of the game. What I liked is I can put him out there and he won't hurt you defensively at all. As a matter of fact, he'll block shots, be first on the puck, and do a great job on the back check sorting out who he's got. So it gives me the freedom to put him on at any moment during the game.
So that's a plus that a lot of youngsters don't understand. They come up and they think gotta fill the net and they wonder why they're sent down after.
It's a winning league, and the players have to understand they need to be reliable first, and then they can add on the rest after, and I think he's figured that out.
So I'm real pleased with the way he's playing when he plays.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297