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NHL WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: KINGS v COYOTESMay 14, 2012Dave TippettPHOENIX, ARIZONA: Practice Day THE MODERATOR: Questions, please. Q. What adjustments do you have to make in light of last nightÂ’s results? COACH TIPPETT: Adjustments all over the board you have to make. First and foremost, if you're not willing to jump in and win a few more one‑on‑one battles, tactical stuff. Q. Any update on Auoin? COACH TIPPETT: First full practice today with the group. So a good sign. If he's available tomorrow or not, we'll revisit that tomorrow morning. Q. Do you have concerns over the match up of centers after last night? COACH TIPPETT: We've gone up against some pretty good teams, pretty good center ice here. We know what we're up against. Like I said last night, I'm more concerned about making sure our guys play to their capabilities, we get everybody playing the way we think they should be playing, judge what the other team is doing. If we can get up to speed, see where we can get to. That's the sense of our guys today, we recognized that L.A. played a strong game last night, but I think we can be much better than we were. Center ice is obviously very important in that. Our whole group can be a lot better. Q. Is it a matter working harder? COACH TIPPETT: No, no, no, this isn't a case of hard work. There are some adjustments. You can work hard to get to a place. We all talk about it. Everybody's going to work hard. It's what you do after you get there that matters. We were around some battles. But once you get yourself into the battle, it's the next step, how are you going to win that battle. For me sometimes it's about will, sometimes about skill also, having the ability to make something positive happen. We just didn't have enough. There's so many instances in a game where there will be a puck up for grabs, ability to get a forecheck stopped, creates something. We just didn't have enough of those last night. We had some. You look at on Boedker's goal, that's one of the few times we got in, separated somebody from the puck, had another guy there, had an opening. We need more opportunities like that or more situations where we put in the work and get results for it rather than put in the work and don't finish the job. Q. On the play of VoynovÂ… COACH TIPPETT: Again, I'm dealing with our defensemen, to realize what they have. I'm sure he's a good, young player, but I'm worried about my guys today. Q. Were you happy with your power play? COACH TIPPETT: Had a couple chances. It's pretty hard to sustain something when you get a big power play, nullified six or seven seconds later. We've had two or three like that on the last couple series here. Those ones, they can really kind of put a dagger in your power play because you're up, you kind of get yourself where you think you have a chance to make a difference, then the difference is taken away. Hanzal had a couple in the last series. We had the one last night. Those are issues that certainly don't help your power play. That being said, I thought there was some execution, just like the rest of our game, that could have been much better last night, a power play that could have made the difference in the game. Q. Retaliation penaltiesÂ… COACH TIPPETT: It wasn't one last night, it was one where a puck bobbles on Larsson, the penalty, the offensive zone, but he gets put in a bad situation. A lot of times you see something like that, the puck bounces by, the guy is going to interfere with him, that usually ends up in a penalty. Q. On being outshot and giving up a lot of shots.. COACH TIPPETT: Well, the first series, what you got to look at is the numbers are per game. Five of our first six games went to overtime, right? You got skewed numbers that way. The numbers last night, went through every single shot, every attempt. I would question some of the numbers, some of the attempts at the net, but I'm not going to second guess the stats guys, that's not what I want to do. I look at the quality we gave up last night. We gave up far more quality opportunities. Quantity I can deal with sometimes, but it's the quality. We gave up far too many quality (indiscernible). Q. Larsson was pretty hard on himself, how did you view his game? COACH TIPPETT: Well, he's 20 years old, but he plays and acts far beyond those years. He's got great poise. That's probably a great indication of where he's at. He evaluates his own game very honestly. He knew he could be better last night. Martin and Klesla were not nearly as good as we needed them to be. Those guys recognize that today and I expect them both to be better. Q. What happened on the game winning goal? COACH TIPPETT: Brown's goal is a simple coverage goal, got caught flat‑footed a little bit. We talked about that after the second period. There's some things we hadn't done very well. I thought our first period wasn't near good enough, and our second period we closed the gap a little bit, had a chance to find a way to win. Very similar to what we talk about in the Nashville game, Game1. Simple coverage play. Brown ends up with a partial breakaway, they get the go ahead. After that we started chasing a little bit. We had two or three decent chances. Quick made some good saves, so... We've been in that situation before. I think our players recognize that. In the playoffs, we've stole a couple of those. We weren't able to do that last night. We come in today, regroup, get ready to go tomorrow. Q. Last night you juggled your top 2 lines, what were you looking for? COACH TIPPETT: Yeah, you're always looking for different ways to tweak your weak things. In our case you have a lot of times where we ‑ I guess the best way to say it ‑ try to step out of the box a little bit. We feel with our group we find ourselves saying that a lot. We have to try something that may work or may not and we may have to take a chance on. Stability and rhythm I think is always good. But in our situation we've found some success by stepping out of the box. There's certain times you have to do that. For us to be successful, we just have to do that. We'll read and react as it goes along here. You get in situations in a game where by hunch you change things up to get somebody's attention. Those are things we've done throughout most of the year but certainly a lot in the playoffs, found some ways to get opportunities for success. Find ways to step out of the box, and hopefully it works. Q. What was the message in practice today? COACH TIPPETT: Well, this time the response is very realistic. You're behind one. You've given up home ice. We've got to respond, just like we did after Game1 in Nashville where we didn't think we played as well as we could have. That's the message today. We didn't play as well as we would have liked, so we have to play better tomorrow. If we play better, hopefully that's the response we need. Q. Were you trying to match certain players against the Kopitar line? COACH TIPPETT: Well, sometimes it depends how the game's going. You got some players that have the ability to be better than others on one night and others that have the ability to be better than others on another night. Last night I thought we made some errors both against Kopitar and Brown on coverage. We'll look at some of those today. Those are group things. Figure out which group is best for tomorrow. Q. Do you think your team was nervous, or was it that the stakes are higher? COACH TIPPETT: I think a little bit of the stakes being higher. But we've been disappointed in the way we played some other games. But, like I said before, we've been able to find a way to kind of scratch and claw our way out of it. Last night, we didn't get the result we wanted. So, you know, it's like every game. You come and reset, there's adjustments you make, both tactically and physically. I think our group will be ready to go tomorrow. Q. Difficulties with Game 1Â’s in the playoff series so farÂ… COACH TIPPETT: We were all right there. The Nashville game, the first half of the game was pretty competitive, the first couple periods. They came at us hard. We made some mistakes. We played six minutes shorthanded in the third. Probably looked a little more like they were pancaking us more than we really thought. But we've hung around some games like that. There's been some times in games where we haven't been very good, but we've managed to hang around. 'Bend don't break' kind of thing. Smitty has been really good. The reality is that's kind of who we are. There's going to be times, sometimes it's not us as much as the other team is playing really well. You have to find a way to get momentum back or defend that. Sometimes it's easier than others. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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