	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 STANLEY CUP FINALS: BRUINS v CANUCKS

June 10, 2011

Alain Vigneault

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA: Game Five

Vancouver Â– 1
Boston - 0

THE MODERATOR: Questions for the Coach Vigneault.

Q. Alain, your goalie yesterday, Roberto Luongo, spoke confidently about your team's chances today and himself and he sort of exuded that leader-like presence and I guess he knew something a lot of people didn't for tonight.
COACH VIGNEAULT: Everybody in our dressing room and around our organization knows Roberto's character and his competitiveness and how he prepares himself.
He went out tonight and he played a great game for us.

Q. Could you talk about his resiliency? I think people outside your team don't see him on a day-to-day basis like you all do, but the fact that he can go through two games like that and come out with a performance like tonight.
COACH VIGNEAULT: I think at the end of the day, in Boston a lot of the attention was put on Roberto, but it was the whole group. This is a team game and our whole group in Boston had two good first periods. For whatever reason, in the second period, we didn't play well. They took advantage of it and they took it to us.
Tonight I thought, you know, we had some penalties to kill in the first. He made some huge saves. We wanted to make sure we had a better second period. In the second period, I thought we played real strong and both goaltenders were amazing.
It was a great hockey game. They weren't giving up anything. And the puck got across the line by a couple of inches, that's the game.

Q. Kevin made the remark that Christopher Tanev looked like he could have played that game with a cigarette in his mouth, that's how calm he was. Your thoughts on the youngster's play?
COACH VIGNEAULT: Chris, every time we've needed him this year, showed a lot of poise. He can take a hit to make a play and move the puck real well. I was confident that putting him in and putting him with Andrew, that it would work out real well for us and it did.

Q. Alain, there were long periods in that game where you couldn't buy a call. Was there anything said between periods to any of your players or any interchange?
COACH VIGNEAULT: No. If you look at our team, we play whistle-to-whistle. We do the best we can to stay out of the scrums even though sometimes we're hauled into them.
But our guys just play. The only guy sometimes that talks to the referees, and that's when I ask, that's Hank. We didn't do that tonight. We tried to play and that's it.

Q. Coach, was there any difficulty at all regrouping the players and getting them refocused after the two games in Boston?
COACH VIGNEAULT: No, I mean, playing for the Stanley Cup finals here. This is the hardest thing each and ever one of us has tried to do. We're trying our best. They're trying their best. Their working their butt off, so are we. It's real competitive and real great hockey out there, so...
I knew our guys were going to be focused. That's what we can control, is how we play. And our guys went out and played hard.

Q. Alain, the bounce pass off the end boards, is that tactical because he plays so far out?
COACH VIGNEAULT: He does play out, and their D's do block shots. Sometimes all you have is a short-side shot. I think that's what Kevin had right there. It took a bounce the right way, right to the other side. Max was able to find the back of the net.

Q. Your thoughts on being one win away from the Stanley Cup?
COACH VIGNEAULT: You've heard me say this a thousand times and it will be a thousand and one now. One game at a time. We're going to take tomorrow to travel to Boston, relax tomorrow, have a good practice the next day, and then we're going to focus on the process, focus on what we need to do to put our best game on the ice.
How do you like that answer?

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297