NHL WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: AVALANCHE v RED WINGS

May 31, 2002

Scotty Bowman

COACH BOWMAN: Yeah. But I knew that, you know, this team was pretty beat up, and we were concerned about the start at home. We haven't really had good starts. I didn't expect it, but I've seen a lot of things happen. I was in Pittsburgh in the finals when we went to Minnesota. I wasn't coaching. It's a tough comeback for a team when they fall behind like that. They have to open up. We knew this.

COACH BOWMAN: I told them a few stories about seventh games that I was in, and I said, whatever happens it's going to be a memorable game. I know everyone was in. I can tell you who scored the goals if we lost or won. I said, we've got to go out and play really hard. We've worked hard to get to this position. Sometimes you play a seventh game, you're up 3-1, it's 3-2. You miss the third. I said we could build on that last game. Obviously, Colorado was a banged-up team. We knew that. I thought the pace that our four lines and our defensemen -- we used all six tonight, and we knew that if we kept doing that we would probably have an advantage. They couldn't do it because they had so many injuries. And they had a couple guys back, but they probably played with a lot of heart because they didn't even skate the last couple of days, those guys like Tanguay and Mike Keane.

COACH BOWMAN: The defense, we haven't moved up a lot because we have been playing against a team that can really burn you. I thought he made a great play to move in. We have to be very careful. We're actually talking about playing a real tight game. We didn't want to pinch. We didn't want to get caught. I felt they would dump it out and chase it down as much as they could. We really haven't made good plays at home in the games. Tonight we made better plays with the puck. That's the way we had to play against that team.

COACH BOWMAN: It's tough going against top goalies in the league for young goalies. Chris Osgood was a good goalie for us. I wouldn't fault him. This team has played a lot better, maybe with the confidence Dominik has given them. It's pretty tough to go against these experienced goalies with the younger goalies until they go through the pains of losing. I'm sure Patrick would say the same thing. He's had a great career. He's not finished yet. It is payback time. But it's good to see that he's also human again, because we once scored 7 or 8 goals on him in Montreal. And I knew the next day after they were going to trade him, I said, this could hurt us in the Western Conference. It's hurt us until now, until we got ahold of Dominik.

COACH BOWMAN: We haven't even thought about that. The guys might have watched some of the games, but we weren't thinking about Carolina. They were thinking about Colorado. We knew when we won what it took to get us knocked out. We haven't even talked about Carolina and, you know, we have had a good rivalry with Colorado. I never felt as pent up as some people. It was a great series from the standpoint of hockey for both teams. I felt it would be tough to lose, but you've got to be proud to win or lose in this series. We had the home ice, that helped us. That was one of the seven times it did. They were one of the two champions, I told them on the ice, Sakic and Roy, when you get pretty banged up, it's pretty hard to compete, and they competed.