NHL STANLEY CUP FINALS: CAPITALS v RED WINGS

June 10, 1998

Scotty Bowman

SCOTTY BOWMAN: Well, obviously when you are in far along, momentum changes even in the middle of the game. If you lose it, you have got to try to get it back. We started the Playoffs talking about the fact that, you know, home ice was -- can be a factor, but if you plan on just winning at home, you will probably be eliminated -- good chance to be eliminated in the early, early rounds. The way our Playoffs went, we got into a bit of trouble, Phoenix won a game, it wasn't much trouble because we had the mindset. We got to go and win our way from home. So, now, I don't think it is the location of the games as much as you win one, okay, that is one game closer that you have 'til the end. You don't get any more for winning the first game or the fourth game or the fifth game. You get one win. So, nowadays we are not even talking about-- because we are -- we don't have the mindset that we have to win in Detroit because then we are not going to play here anymore. We already lost, you know, some games at home. We talked about it during the Dallas series that we had that opportunity by winning the Dallas series probably was decided because we won the first game on their ice and we got home and it was about time we started to win some games at home because you are going to continue to win on the road. I don't know, we were 6 and 2 or 6 and -- something like that in the first -- after we won that Dallas game and I think now we just try to play game by game and, yes, momentum can change, but it also can be taken back pretty quick.

SCOTTY BOWMAN: Well, Dallas was a different -- you know, when we got to Game 6, we saw in Game 5 they put Modano and Lehtinen and Langenbrunner. In other words, on the line together because of their injured Nieuwendyk, they had other lines that played well, but percentagewise, they probably weren't going to score and in the fifth game that line got half their chances so we came home. I just said if we are going to win this game, you know, we are going to have to stop that line, so, we put our best five guys on the ice and it was a lot easier because we matched up Lidstrom and Murphy with Fedorov and Shanahan and Yzerman and we were trying to get Shanahan going so we moved him to right wing. It did a good job in that game, and -- but this is a different kind of a team, so, we started that way and I didn't think we looked that good in the first three or four shifts each line and sometimes when you put players together of the same kind, it doesn't work as well as when you have -- especially, the fact that we had pretty familiar lines. I mean, people think we change our lines -- we have changed our lines during the season for most reasons that all teams have with injuries and when you are not satisfied, but we have had a kind of a stand by -- I mean, our lines that we got back to, I thought it got us back into the game -- took over the game early when we scored our two goals. And, it was basically the lines are played so well in the Finals last year with the exception of Tomas Sandstrom he was replaced by Tomas Holmstrom who has been a big factor for us. That seemed to get us going and, you know, with this team, they do provide a little bit different because they have a couple of lines that haven't been -- haven't been really scoring for them.

SCOTTY BOWMAN: Yeah, he didn't get much opportunity this year. His expectations were to get in there and replace may be a Tomas Sandstrom, but, you know, we signed Brent Gilchrist who was a very experienced player that could play center or wing. Tomas really never -- he continued to work hard. He worked a lot off ice. I give a lot of credit to Barry Smith on Tomas because Barry, as you know, was an assistant coach with Team Sweden in the World Cup and then he wasn't chosen this year to go to the Olympics because he wasn't playing. I guess the reason he wasn't chosen is because we weren't playing him. It was easier for them to pick other guys that we were playing. Barry started working with him off ice to try to get his foot speed off. Barry worked a lot with Jagr in Pittsburgh when he first started and there is no comparison in those players. But he saw how it got him stronger and that is what he -- he has worked hard off the ice. He got his opportunity a couple of months to go. We always felt he has a good scoring touch. You can watch him in practice. He can fool the goalies when he got in tight and he has the ability to go in front of the net when we did make the -- when they brought him over a couple of years ago, he didn't know -- Ciccarelli had just left. We had just traded him to Tampa. That was the report that we had, that he was pretty close to what Dino does in front of the net. He was very tough to get out of there and he had the scoring touch to put the pucks in the net. So, he isn't comparable to Dino Ciccarelli who scored over 600 goals, but he is a hard worker considering he has gotten better. Nothing phases him and he had to really wait his turn. He only plays eight or nine minutes a game. I guess it is because, you know, we go with defensive guys. He is not a risk defensively. But it is just the way we play our four lines and he doesn't kill penalties. We have other guys -- we probably should put him on the powerplay a little more.

SCOTTY BOWMAN: Well, it is only the fact that when we lost Vladimir at the beginning of the season, we had high hopes for Anders Eriksson and I think Anders had a real good year. If you look at the rookie, you know, evaluation, he won't get many votes, but he had a very good record on our team compared to other young defenseman. It just happened that when we got into the -- when we were going down towards the deadline, we just felt we needed some experience going into the Playoffs. That is why we made the deal to acquire actually two defensemen Dmitri Mironov and Jamie Macoun. I think the main reason was we had seven defensemen on our roster and I really -- I think going into the Playoffs, it is pretty risky with that just few -- we had a couple of young kids at Adirondack, two Russian defensemen - Kuznetsov and Golubovsky. That is why we went with the fact we got Mironov and Macoun. We started to play Jamie. We always liked him when he played against Toronto and he has a good run in the Playoffs with both Calgary and Toronto. It is not a case -- if we had an injury, we would not hesitate to put in either Dmitri Mironov or Aaron Ward. It has been tougher on Aaron Ward because he played last year after the first or second game of the Playoffs. He played all the way through with Bob Rouse and did a good job for us, but we had Konstantinov last year. We had him for penalty killing, and for a lot of crucial situations against good lines and basically we have put that responsibility on the shoulders of both Jamie Macoun and Bob Rouse has been elevated up the ladder as well.

SCOTTY BOWMAN: No, we took care of it as the game went on. Last night's game was probably the least penalized game of the ones we have played in the Playoffs. So we don't want to be running into a lot of retaliatory penalties, and with some other player you could maybe have some concern but Steve, he has always been looked after -- has looked after himself. That is the way you want to do it. And he was getting key faceoffs in the third period. Those things are going to happen in the game and, you know, we don't expect teams to hand us something on a matter and more concerned about stopping Peter Bondra and Adam Oates than we are about trying to protect our own players. We don't have to worry about that.

SCOTTY BOWMAN: Well, he had the best scoring chance, I think, of the third period for Washington. It just missed the net. It was a real good chance from a quick shot from the slot area. Nothing in particular, maybe he is -- he has got that quick breakaway speed. You'd like to have some offense. I don't think you can just play straight defense against that line. You have got to have some scoring chances you have got to try to keep the puck a little bit and somebody aware of where he is because he -- they have a pretty good system. They move the puck up the boards pretty hard. And they use an overlap play where the wingers and that line is effective because the other fellas, Zednik and Bondra, European players can get from one side of the rink to the other. They are both quick, and we saw the goal they scored in overtime. So you have to be aware -- we haven't put a particular checker against him. We have tried -- we try to give them some offense against them and we try to maybe in certain situations give them a winger who is more committed to defense. Those kind of players I don't feel you can do much with just one dimension. We will try to give them as much as we can. We don't want to just spend all the attention on that line because they the other lines has been pretty productive. But different looks is -- I think that is what -- then we have got -- we actually could play our three pairs of defensemen; that is the way we have tried to do it of late, but give some offense and also give them some defense and not put the responsibility on just one player. I don't think you have much successful just put it all on one player. But our left defensemen, we are fortunate, we have experienced left defensemen. As you know we have Nicklas Lidstrom who has been terrific all the way through the season and Playoffs. Jamie Macoun and Slava Fetisov, so as far as -- those are as experienced as a defense group as you are going to get on that one side.

SCOTTY BOWMAN: Last year Joey -- we actually at the time was during the regular season, first half, we have some pretty tough wingers and mainly Shanahan, Lapointe, McCarty were getting in a lot of scraps against guys on other teams that were taken advantage of, not taken advantage but getting into -- I mean, there was a lot of fights. We had a lot of fights at the beginning of the 1996/1997 season, we knew that Joey was in town. He came around the dressing room a few times before we made the deal. Steve had known him from being a teammate. You know, he would like to have got a chance to play with our team and we knew what he had done. You know, he had been on a winning team with New York and he went down the IHL. I didn't know much about Joey. I never knew what kind of a player he was, just sort of reputation goes around. He is really a smart player. He knows how to play hockey. That sounds strange, but he has really got a big sense for the game. And he has got the reputation that he has been able to -- you know, he was on the Red Wings where they didn't have half a good a team as they have now and made a good impact. Now he is much older and much more experienced and he has shown us what he can do if he has been given the opportunity in certain situations. He is the ideal player because he can play between six and ten minutes a game and be ready to play and the big surprise that we got, I feel, is defensive ability has been strong. I mean, I think that came from the experience of being in New York and they won and that is the kind of player he is.

SCOTTY BOWMAN: I can't tell you all the matchups we won. But I think we just changed around a bit too much. I think what happened is we got into a situation in the game where we had players that hadn't played a lot together, you know, I just felt that they were playing four lines. They were mixing their lines up a little bit and, you know, sometimes you get tempted to go to three lines when you have personnel, some of the personnel we have, you know, it worked in the Dallas game because we played some guys a little more. And there is enough time between games in this series that -- I mean, the way -- you know, guys can play a lot. It is pretty tempting to play guys a lot. We had -- we had like timeouts last night when you -- you know, there are 90 seconds which the time you get back to play, it is over nearly a minute and three-quarters so, and you get 4 of them every period. So, you know, that was the problem, I think we got away from being a four-line team. And, that is something that we-but sometimes you have to change and we -- we talked about it at the end of the first period, I said I really don't like the way the game is going because even though we are ahead, you know, because they have two lines that concern you, you know, you want -- we thought we could make just a couple of lines to play against them, and matching up is -- we have been matching up some of the time, but sometimes when you match up like we did early in the game it keeps -- and the other team, if you want to keep players away from certain players on the other team, if they start playing those players a little more, you got guys sitting there and that has been something we have watched a lot as the ice time of our team and, you know, you don't know what kind of a game you are getting into. If we get a lot of powerplay penalty situations, the Dallas game was always over a period a game. I know we looked at the Washington/Boston series. Boston was always a 10 or 12 minutes on the powerplay every game. And you get this far, you can't tell coming in how many minutes you are going to be shorthanded or on the powerplay. Obviously in a game like last night if we knew going in there was only going to be, you know, it was 14 minutes, I think, both teams, then you'd want to get 4 lines rolling and that it took us a bit of time to do that.