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NHL WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: KINGS v COYOTESMay 17, 2012Dave TippettLOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Game Three THE MODERATOR: Questions for Coach Tippett. Q. (No microphone.) COACH TIPPETT: Well, he's played in the playoffs, played some games in the national series. Solid player for us. Treat it just like an injury where one person's loss is another person's opportunity. He's got to jump in and give us a solid game. Q. (No microphone.) COACH TIPPETT: No, we'll see where that goes he's a center and right wing, so we can flip him around. Q. When you move a guy around like Marty, what do you do? COACH TIPPETT: He's strength in the middle. He's a big guy that, for most of the years, has centered our top line. It is what it is. We've got to focus on the players that are coming in, on a game plan that we feel we can be successful with. Certainly like to have Marty in there, but it's not a factor tonight, so we have to concentrate on the other options. Q. When you're down 2‑0 in a series, psychologically how do you keep them loose enough to go out and play? COACH TIPPETT: I think when you're in the underdog role, we have nothing to lose but to play well, right? Things haven't gone as well as we'd like the first two games. We have to come out. There's still some areas of our game that I think we can be better, some execution areas. I don't think we played our best game in the series yet. I thought the first half of Game2 was pretty solid, pretty solid. If you watch the game again on tape, they had a few more shots than we did, but lots of outside stuff. It's obvious they're throwing lots of pucks at Smitty so he doesn't play it outside the net. The rest of the game was not bad. We just have to find a way to sustain that, if we can. We've been a team that we find ways to win, bend don't break, and very seldom do you find situations where we beat ourselves. Last game I think that was the case. You could say that we ended up beating ourselves. That's looking at it from our perspective. I'm sure L.A. is thinking they did some things to play well. But we look at it as we beat ourselves in that game. Q. (No microphone.) COACH TIPPETT: Well, I don't know. I mean, everybody talks about that. I guess you get on the road, the players are together, there's no distractions. This time of year you should be focused anyway. What we look at is just the ability to make sure you play a sound game. I think that's what happens during the regular season. You go on the road, you go in and want to play a sound hockey game, like we talk about, not beat yourself. The home team is going to be pumped up and ready to go. You got to make sure you're doing things right not to give them any more life. You have to find ways to win. That's kind of been our M.O. all year.  That's why I think we've had some success on the road. Q. (No microphone.) COACH TIPPETT: Yeah, he's skating, but he won't be able to play tonight. Q. Everybody is talking about their size and physicality. When you know that threat is there, do you almost brace for that, know that contact is going to be there? COACH TIPPETT: We're worried about how hard we're going to play. You know, you see certain players have more success than the others. But a player has to use his assets. If he's not a big guy, use your speed, your skill. If you're a big guy, play big. To me, that's an individual thing. Q. When a team gets down as you are, player leadership is very important. Do you feel good about that? COACH TIPPETT: Very good. Very good. We have a very honest group here. They're honest in their opinion of themselves. After that game the other night, I didn't have to tell them we beat ourselves. They knew what our issues were. We talk about that as a group, try to fix some of those things. But we're also focused on what we can do to find a way to win in Game3. The leadership goes both ways. It can help the negative side and entice the positive side. I think our leadership is very good. Q. You talk about beating yourself. Is that part of the battle, having a short memory, forgetting about what happened? COACH TIPPETT: Well, in a series, you have to leave each game. That game is over, there's nothing you can do about it. It's not like the regular season where you're piling up points. Each individual game can be a very important game. For us, obviously this one here, I mean, they're all important, but when you lose two in a row, the urgency continues to mount. You know, if you're dwelling about the past two, you're not thinking about the one you have to take care of next. Our group is pretty good that way. We learn from the mistakes. We try to correct some things. But there's areas our team is always focused on what is the next task we have to take and how are we going to overcome that. Q. Can that be helpful, playing with desperation, back against the wall? COACH TIPPETT: Again, desperation, all that should start day one of the regular season. I would be standing up here saying 'liar,' that you're going to get desperation for 82 games. But in the playoffs there's desperation all the way around. Q. (No microphone.) COACH TIPPETT: You know, it's funny, I spent last night watching a couple periods of our last regular‑season game against LosAngeles, then I watched a couple periods of our last game. I think we haven't executed as well as we would like. It's not just those two. Those two are guys we obviously rely on with strong execution. Our whole group, I think we can execute a little better, a little cleaner, take a lot of the trouble away from ourselves by not bobbling as many pucks. You're always trying to find solutions or find ways that you can tweak things. In looking at it, the execution is still a factor for us. Those guys, you saw what they've done this year. Their execution has been very good. Last little bit, just need a little better execution from both of them. Q. (No microphone.) COACH TIPPETT: It was good. I think there was some frustration obviously. I know Shane is such a caring guy about what happened, he was very disappointed about his penalty the other night. Didn't think it should be a five‑minute. Certainly we concur with him a little bit. But the frustration was from losing, not from individual. There was a lot of individual occurrences that happened that led to some frustration, but we talked about that yesterday. We have to turn that frustration into a positive energy, not a negative energy. That's the mindset going into today. Q. Does this team relish the underdog role? COACH TIPPETT: I think that's happened, right? Somebody sent me an email yesterday being picked 15th going into the conference (laughter). We're finding ways to overcome the adversity and we'll continue to try to find that. That's kind of the way it's been for a long time for us, so that doesn't seem to bother us too much. The underdog role, it is what it is. Q. (No microphone.) COACH TIPPETT: Just to see if there's anything that I could pick up that would help us, why our execution wasn't as good as it could be, the level of play of their team, our team. There's a lot of things. You get senses of how you think the games went. We were very competitive against them all year. The series was very tight. You're just trying to find things that can help our group. Q. (No microphone.) COACH TIPPETT: I'll just say I watched our team more than them. But, you know, they were on a pretty good run right then, I think. I think it was late February, the game. I don't think they put their hard push on for the playoffs yet. But they're still a solid team. Q. Talk about Smitty's role. COACH TIPPETT: Well, when we traded him from Dallas, he was a young player that we thought was going to be an excellent, excellent player, number one goaltender in the league. We didn't trade him because we didn't like him. We traded him because we weren't going to be able to keep him. For whatever reason, it didn't work out in Tampa. Last summer we were looking for a goaltender. I knew Smitty. I knew him as a person. Thought he's a guy that would fit great into our situation because he was looking for an opportunity, and we had an opportunity to give. Secondly, Sean Burke and him played a similar style. Burke is very good with the goaltenders. When we talked about it as an organization, we just thought he would be a good fit. Don was able to get a contract done with him. Coming in, you know, all this is well and good. We hope it's going to work. But it's up to Smitty to make it work. He's put the work in, physically, tactically, mentally. He's just continued to get stronger and stronger throughout the season. Sean, they've got a great relationship, the two of them. He's just met every challenge with success. You know, he's entrenched himself as a top goaltender in the league and we're certainly lucky to have him. Q. (No microphone.) COACH TIPPETT: Oh, yeah. Yeah, it goes farther than hockey, too. Ping‑pong, soccer games outside with the players, there's a lot of competitiveness in him. That's one of the things I love about him. Q. (No microphone.) COACH TIPPETT: Every player is different. But there's been a lot of talk about we have a lot of first‑round draft picks on our team that didn't pan out on other teams. Sometimes what happens, especially high picks like that, expectations are so high for them, no matter what they do, it's not going to be enough. By the time we get them, we're just looking for solid role players and they seem to fit in all right. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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