NHL STANLEY CUP FINALS: HURRICANES v RED WINGS

June 5, 2002

Scotty Bowman

COACH BOWMAN: We don't know about Fredrik. He went for some ex-rays, and we will get a report back, probably, I am sure by the end of the day.

COACH BOWMAN: Yeah, and came back and finished the game. He missed a couple of shifts.

COACH BOWMAN: Well, it wasn't what we wanted. Obviously, started off -- I thought we had a real poor start, we were able to get through it. And I think basically without putting the finger on a bunch of stuff -- it's strange we had a real poor passing game. Our passes really hurt us, especially in the first half of the game. We caused a lot of turnovers, and it didn't result in a lot of damage, but it certainly stopped the offense.

COACH BOWMAN: They have been playing together, though, since early in the Colorado Series, or probably before that. And they have been pretty productive. They scored a big goal -- he scored a lot of goals. In Game 1 against Colorado, McCarty got a hat trick and they still scored a goal last night. Darren hit the goal post. I don't think they have been a problem as a line; I don't know what you are referring to.

COACH BOWMAN: Well, yeah, they have done it in the Playoffs before. They are a strong defensive line. They are hard to play against. They bring a lot of ingredients that you want to a line and they obviously have chemistry. Sometimes you have to spread it out a little bit, but they have been together more in the Playoffs than they have been separated.

COACH BOWMAN: No. We were trying to pass through their trap. They have got a real solid trap, and we tried to make some passes through it, and we also hit guys with the puck. That's what Toronto found out, is that they didn't get much of a forecheck against them. I don't know exactly what Toronto was -- if they were doing the same as we were. But, you know, even the very first shift of the game, we had a long shift. We had a minute and a half, couldn't get off. We had three chances to get it in and never got it in. I am not sure -- there were guys in the way, but we were just a little bit short of putting it where we wanted to. And that's not the way we played against Colorado. The teams played differently; Colorado can beat you on the rush. This team doesn't have much -- they don't spend much time in their own end because they get it out quickly. We have just got to find a way to get through the neutral zone with carrying the puck a little more maybe and stuff like that. And you have to shoot it in sometimes. Then if you don't do good work in the neutral zone, you don't make good changes. That was probably the one area where we have been pretty good - changed team had some glitches in games, but if you don't -- you can always get off the ice if the puck is not in the danger zone. And it happened again in the second -- second periods are tough for both teams. We made -- we were under siege and we didn't get the puck down far enough. The one player broke his stick and we -- you know, you can look at it anyway you want. If it would have been first or third period, we probably would have been able to get back in time. But we didn't in the second. But we could have done the same as them. We didn't do it. We have a good trap too. I mean, when you can't forecheck -- I thought where we were really able to stymie them was on the shoot-in, stuff like that. But even on the winning goal we got the faceoff. It was a pretty simple play, but we just got it out into the neutral zone. We didn't get it -- it's not good enough in the Playoffs to get the puck just out over your zone all the time. Sometimes you have got to have it down further. I don't know if we would have made a line change in overtime because there was a long delay after the first -- we had 18 seconds in the powerplay and then we had the 15th second -- we hadn't been able to talk to the League about exactly what happened, but the puck sort of hit Irbe's glove. There was a big discussion, there was a delay, so we weren't tired. There was a report that the referee was -- they called down, said faceoff should be outside. But I haven't seen that on the tape yet. I haven't talked to the League about it. It's no big deal, maybe, because we would have had a faceoff in their end, maybe, with three seconds left and the penalty killer still had 3 seconds. It's a shot in the dark.

COACH BOWMAN: I thought they gave us space and time. We didn't take good shots. You know, there's a period where Colorado really blocked a lot of shots and they come at you real quickly. If you don't make quick plays at the net you are not going to get it through. And last night I think we maybe were guilty of -- anytime a powerplay doesn't function, the first reaction is they are not taking enough shots. But last night we took some onetimers from angles. They don't really pursue all the time, and that's something we have to adjust to is taking the good shot.

COACH BOWMAN: I never look at a loss as a -- (laughs) trying to review history because they are all -- the next game is different. We just can't think too far ahead now. Obviously the second game is always a crucial game in a series for me. Teams have come back from 0-2, I know that. But this second game, even when home ice was a huge factor, getting the second win at home in those instances was crucial because then you give the other team two games of pressure. There will be pressure on every game as it goes along, but we just have to concentrate trying to even up this series. That's what we are trying to do at this time. And you think about those things. I think about it myself, but how do you know if history is going to repeat? I know in Montreal in '79 we won three Cups in a row and we were pretty good. We only lost, I think, four games in the Playoffs, but the Rangers were a bit of a Cinderella team. I don't know how they got through Philly or something. I know John Davidson, he was playing lights-out in the whole Playoffs. We were pretty excited. Pretty confident to have a team that won three Cups in a row. Now you are in your fourth Final, they came into Montreal on Sunday afternoon, we didn't know what the hell happened. It wasn't as dominating as last night. Last night was a pretty even game, scoring, chancewise, I think they had little more pressure on us, on the even strength play, but we lost 4 to 1 to the Rangers, I mean, it was such a crisis we were going to take out Dryden in the next game, and then always thank Doug Riseborough about it, we took a pre-game shot, knocked Larouque (phonetic) out of net, Dryden went in and won four games. That's a little bit -- that's a long time ago. You think about it, but it is not going to happen unless you play as well as we did when we had that team in Montreal. We bounced back the next game, and had a terrific four games. But I don't think it has anything to do with the game tomorrow tonight, I really don't.

COACH BOWMAN: I don't know about the ice. Steve would know more than I would about the ice - he's on it. I just thought that, you know, I said before the series, it's not about -- it's not about overconfidence. It's how you play when the game starts. And you can slice it anyway you want. Possibly it shouldn't happen, coming after -- when we started off against Colorado in Game 7 we had a tremendous start, and it was hard to believe how you could start that well in one game and then not start that well in the next game. But possibly we were guilty of taking some chances in the neutral zone and they were there, I don't know there's always that possibility about the ice, but you know, we had 14 turnovers. A lot of them -- I think there was 12 of them on bad passing. We sometimes go through games and don't have many more than that. We had 14 in the first period. And 12 of them were the result -- when I say a bad pass I meant the past never got to the receiver, I mean, it wasn't -- I don't think -- in all the cases the guy wasn't that rushed. It is just -- you know, hey, once -- I think that's the most important thing about a team when it's functioning is their passing. It's seems to be an automatic skill some nights and it was -- we were really guilty last night. There's no way you can look at the tape and not think otherwise.

COACH BOWMAN: It wasn't one of his better games. He knows it. But you know, you got to look also that they had -- I thought they had some wingers that did a big job for them. O'Neill had a lot of, you know, speed and they played O'Neill and Kapanen quite a bit against that line. Stevie was on the wing. We might make some adjustments in that line. We haven't decided yet if we're going to do it or not. We got some options that we have done before and -- but we felt that Carolina is a strong faceoff team and that's -- having Fedorov and Yzerman with Shanahan has been a good line on faceoffs against us. We did okay on the faceoffs too, but no, I think with Brendan, he had a long shift the first shift, couldn't get it in a couple of times and sometimes you start pressing, but you can't hang it on one player. I mean, you want to just finger out one guy, I don't think that's right because we had other guys that had chances on the powerplay. We have a couple different powerplays that we used, I think when you lose like we did last night, I don't think I can just say this guy or that guy. The one thing that happened last night which maybe hurt us a bit was it-- was they are going to clamp down, I think Andy Van Hellemond, he's the type of supervisor, he wants penalties called. That's the type of referee he was, and there was 20 minutes last night in the game, yeah, you could arguably say if you looked at it again, say it could have been 12. There was some calls on both sides you wondered why they didn't call that all the way through, but they might do that in the Finals. It hurt us in this instance that we have a lot of guys that play on the powerplay and penalty kill throughout the year. You are going to keep your same guys doing it. And it added to a lot of ice time for Yzerman, Fedorov, Shanahan, took away from guys that were effective last night, Devereaux, Datsyuk, Hull, if you look at the scoring chances, and possession, they had less than ten minutes. I mean, that's -- you can say, well, the coach could put him on but you have a 40-minute game because you have got 20 minutes and then on the powerplay or penalty kill, you can't go into tomorrow night thinking there isn't going to be any powerplay time on both sides, you never know. But I think the four-man rotation last night wasn't very effective for that reason, Larionov had 11 minutes a little bit on the powerplay, doesn't kill penalties much. Who else, McCarty has had a good Playoff. Draper, Maltby are on the powerplay kills. He had less than ten minutes. We have to make those adjustments. We have to get more balance. If we had 20 more minutes tomorrow night again we would have to make adjustments on our units to not have that imbalance again but that's the way it happened. We try to take care of it in the third period but it didn't work.

COACH BOWMAN: They get the back out of their end very quickly, there's not a -- if you look at zone time on this team, it's always -- even I didn't look at the other series but the Toronto series there's only one game that Toronto had a minute -- zone time is a bit misleading because you don't know who has the puck. You look at the zone time you see eight and a half minutes. We're more a puck position team. I mean, we pass back and forth, and try things like that with the experience defense we have. And so we're going to have the puck in our end and it looks like maybe, gee, the puck is in the Detroit end but Carolina, they get the puck down pretty quickly. They will flip some pucks, they will rush the puck a bit. So the further down you get towards your end of the rink, the better setup you are going to make in the neutral zone. I thought that's what we wanted to do last night. We didn't get the puck deep enough in their end, deep enough means over the blue line, top of the cycle, then you can move in a little bit. But we looked at it pretty closely this morning. I was looking at it before and we had some -- we were anxious, you know, you go in there and you go in on one defensemen and they got-- they spread out pretty good and we were -- maybe over anxious to do some forechecking because I know in looking at the Toronto tapes, that was one thing that Toronto only had in the whole series, six games, I guess, plus overtime, they only had 10 scoring chances on the forecheck. They just couldn't do it. We didn't get a lot last night again so we're going to have to change the forecheck obviously, and getting the puck down further, you can move up quicker. You lose it in the neutral zone, or you make a lousy shoot-in. If you make a lousy shoot-in it is a pretty good chance your defense is not going to get up the ice. They are looking around and now they start looking for their wingers and they are back a little bit, and that's what happens. So I would say it's a lot -- you have to correct our entries we have to correct where we put the puck.