NHL STANLEY CUP FINALS: HURRICANES v RED WINGS

June 10, 2002

Scotty Bowman

COACH BOWMAN: I haven't talked to them about that. We don't -- I mean, that's something that I never ever bring up. I don't know what they talk to each other about, but I doubt if any of them are thinking that way.

COACH BOWMAN: No, not 'til we had our training camp, you know, we lost three right wingers last year from last year's team: Doug Brown retired, and Pat Verbeek signed with Dallas and Martin Lapointe with Boston. That was always something I was thinking of, and Brett Hull signed with us. That was one of the players coming in -- and I think we talked a bit during the summer. We don't see each other in the summer. I see Barry Smith a little bit because he's back not far from where I am, and Dave Lewis is in Detroit. He was pretty busy; he has some camps. We talked about looking at some right wingers that we maybe -- Holmstrom, that's what we did. We didn't talk about lines or anything, Holmstrom, or putting Kris Draper -- he played most of the season at right wing and we didn't -- see, in the summer we didn't know about Pavel Datsyuk at that time at all. Nobody knew him until he got to the rookie camp prior to the main camp.

COACH BOWMAN: He's very shifty. He's one of those guys that has a lot of moves; we see it in practice quite a bit. And now he's had a great regular season. After he got in the regular rotation, then he kind of -- towards the end of season, long schedule, felt -- his minutes went up in the second half, went to the Olympics, he went to the All-Star games, pretty busy season for him. But he can -- I would say like he has got that stick handling ability and he played with confidence right from -- never suffered from confidence even at the beginning when he didn't play a lot.

COACH BOWMAN: Igor works a lot with him. He's doing a lot better on his English now. He has a little bit of trouble at the beginning, but I think he plays a lot like Igor does too, you know, he's usually -- they are both centermen. I think Larionov was a winger, but I think what he means is his ability to stick handle, yes.

COACH BOWMAN: No, Igor knew -- Igor knows him. They had a very successful time in San Jose together. They came within a game of knocking -- overtime with Toronto and after they beat us in 1994 and he also had good -- very good success with the Russian team, so he has got good credentials because he's been on a couple teams. Then this -- I don't remember playing so many games. Played a lot of their, you know, heavy schedule last year and then this year a little less because they had another goalie. But he's a very experienced goalie.

COACH BOWMAN: Colorado did the same thing. They had a lot of blocked shots in their series with us. I know that the other night we had a lot of shots, attempted shots and obviously the more shots you attempt, the more that -- the more, I mean I still think we have got to just keep shooting -- I don't think you have got -- if we slow down and think about not shooting I think it would be a negative for us. I think we have got -- the more pucks that go to the net, eventually some will go there and you might get a rebound and you may get a deflection, so, I don't have an answer why Colorado -- they blocked a lot of shots on there penalty kill. They have those kind of guys up front. We did it just a little bit. I don't think we want to change a lot as far as taking the shots. Some of them are shots from the angle and they are being blocked with the stick and I really don't know -- I never hang myself on all of those stats. We see, you know, I don't know what -- it's an interpretation by the local person, even in Detroit, we keep stats of our own and they are oftentimes -- sometimes they are pretty close; sometimes they are not. So I mean, I don't know as far as -- you guys have to get those stats and even the zone time doesn't mean much to us. Who's got the puck, you know, they can't have everything. Like when they put the zone time in, and if you have the puck -- Carolina doesn't fool around in their own end very much. They move it out pretty quickly. We go "D" to"D" a little more than them. So we're -- you are going to go have more zone time. When I first saw it a few months ago, I said, you think you got a lot of pressure on your own end but, they can't -- be impossible to keep the stat who's got the puck in your own zone. A lot of those stats, I don't know, they are the hands of the marker too, and faceoffs are I guess, that's another one. I like stats but I don't -- I don't really -- I don't think they are all gospel really.

COACH BOWMAN: We are going to try change it as fast as we can. That would be the priority No. 1, to not you know, I think the guys are taking the precaution yesterday and today to rest up as much as they can, and -- but once the game starts, can't be resting anymore so try to have quick shifts, that will be the crucial part of is -- how we change line changes will be important. We have to make the first move. There's not a lot of line matching, all that kind of stuff. Little bit on defense, they have some defensemen they want to play against some of our guys and we do too. Both teams change. It not like it happens every shift and we want to play -- we definitely want it play four lines.