NHL EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: DEVILS v SENATORS

May 22, 2003

Pat Burns

COACH PAT BURNS: No.

COACH PAT BURNS: Sure. Why not? Best team in the League. Now it's a down to one game. It doesn't matter now. Nobody has the lead. Now it's a one-game situation.

COACH PAT BURNS: He got on the plane today and I asked him; he says he's fine today. This is Playoff time. You bite your lip and you take it, whatever it is. Everybody has bumps and bruises. I saw Hossa having to be helped off too. He came back and played a hell of a game the other night so I am not too concerned about that.

COACH PAT BURNS: Wait a minute. What did we do to try to avoid the hype?

COACH PAT BURNS: If you recall one thing, back last weekend it was the Tulip Festival, don't you think it would have made much sense for us to stay downtown. There was bands, outdoor bands Downtown, everything, and this week is the three-loop festival, so, I don't know. We're not trying -- we weren't trying to avoid nothing. Why is it that we can't make our own itinerary and decide where we want to go? We even got saying we stayed in another state - anyways to the U.S. it's not a state, it is a providence. It's closer actually to get to the rink from here than it is from Downtown. You just jump on 417 here and you are halfway there. I don't think it's a big deal. We didn't try to avoid nothing. We just don't want to go downtown and because we knew that there would be a lot of festivities going last weekend and seeing the hotel did good for us and did very well for us, you know, we had booked it to come back here again. Okay, back to the other question.

COACH PAT BURNS: Nothing against bands. It's just that it wasn't -- I don't think it was the right thing for our club to -- nobody is trying to run away from everything. We went back after the first game. We took a lot of criticism but we came back and won some games. We didn't certainly get any credit for it, that's for damn sure.

COACH PAT BURNS: Does it really matter tomorrow? This is a one-game situation, whether you are a veteran team -- it doesn't matter tomorrow. What matters tomorrow is how you are going to enter the game and how you are going to play, how you are going to be focused. It might be easier to get veterans to focus over it is to try to get rookies but I don't think anybody has the advantage because they have veteran players over non-veteran players. There is no advantage in a 7th game. I have been involved in a lot of 7th game Playoffs and there's not really an advantage because you never know. It comes down to who is going to get the bounces tomorrow night and that's what it is going to be. If you recall in last night's game we missed an open net. We missed a wide open net. They came down soon enough. If we don't miss that open net, we're not even here, we're somewhere else, we're starting to think about something else because this is what these games are down -- that's how close and tight they are right now.

So I don't think that the veteran system makes a difference or not, whether you have veterans or -- it's all going to be down to who is going to get a couple of good bounces tomorrow night and who is going to make the less mistakes.

COACH PAT BURNS: I don't think we got blown out. I don't think we got blown out. I have to be positive the way I thought our club played. I think that we were -- we played that game there, it was tight all the way, came to our rink it was tight all the way in overtime. I think it's positive. I think it's positive.

COACH PAT BURNS: If there's a comfort factor, that's probably it. I think Marty has been in these situations before and -- but it's not just one guy, I think everybody knows that, but if you were a gambling man and you had to go into a situation who would you want in net?

COACH PAT BURNS: I said from the start if you look at your notes back there I said it will be a long series. And we felt that. Like I told you, we were up 3-1 and I was surprised to be up 3-1, honestly I was. And you know, this is -- I keep on saying this, is the best team in the League all year long. There was 30 teams when all this started and we are down to three. Not too many people even gave us a chance to be part of that last three. Even Anaheim but if you would have said at the start of the Playoffs that the last three teams were going to be Ottawa and New Jersey and Anaheim, it would have been a lot of funny looks, a lot of funny looks.

COACH PAT BURNS: No, I said just said it was going to be a long series and I would say it was going to last-- you know, either six or seven games. I had said it before it started.