NHL EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: DEVILS v SENATORS

May 17, 2003

Pat Burns

PAT BURNS: No. (LAUGHTER) We tease him a lot during practice and we have fun with it. I think again -- I mentioned this before -- he was a great scorer in collegiate hockey and we had a talk a long time ago. He will probably laugh at it. I said you know when you can't score you have got to shoot for the posts instead of shooting for the crest in the front of the jersey because he would always kill that crest all the time. I don't know if that's the reason but it was kind of fun -- you know what if there's anybody in this whole dressing room that deserves I guess the glory of scoring goals it would be Jay. Just a hard worker, good all around player every single day. Doesn't get a whole lot of -- even in the past here we talked about Jamie and Madden; didn't talk much about Jay Pandolfo and in this series he got a couple of -- last one, but it's good to see him chip in too.

PAT BURNS: Well, their goal in the first really got to us, I think. When we got off -- at that point in time in the period I thought really took the air out of us and we had to readjust -- came back in the second period and that lingered for I would say three-quarters of the second period. Then we got that tying goal, that Jay got and then we went into the dressing room and we talked about things we have to do. We have to start stop talking about things that we think we are doing well which we weren't doing well. Then we came back to the basics, what we were trying to do and certainly it paid off.

PAT BURNS: Yeah, surprisingly we got two powerplay goals. Your powerplay can suck all year long, but when it counts, it is fun. It counted today. Shorthanded goal too which is even more.

PAT BURNS: This team has experience and it has ways of finding ways but again we have won this game and this team is too good, Ottawa on the other side, to think anything is won. Even at the end we played hard right to the end because we didn't want to give them nothing. We didn't want to give them any kind of life whatsoever. If you play that way usually you will get a lot of chances. That's the way we played. We came out after the second period and I said let's keep it tight, let's keep this game real tight, let's not get into a match with them where we are going to be trading chances because we might lose. The guys did that and then we did that, we got more chances.

PAT BURNS: I don't think it means anything now, regular season and whatnot. I think what is important is you know, we have to win one and they have got to win three, so I think what we have to do is go out and work for that next win. They are not going to roll over and die. I know they are not. They are too much of a good team and they worked too hard all season long to roll over and die. We expect a big game from them and we're going to have to be ready for that in Ottawa.

PAT BURNS: Again, certain things you do in the regular season might not mean anything. Certain things that Marty does in the regular season he brings it into the Playoffs. Without him where would we be? He's that type of goaltender that keeps you in the game. If he makes mistakes he will fix that mistake for you pretty good. Somebody -- like I was saying, I have run out of words to say things about him. I just don't know what to say anymore. He makes the big saves at the right time.

PAT BURNS: Amazingly without even looking ahead we refuse to talk about that and we won't. One thing funny, this morning at breakfast time at the team breakfast, this morning we all got up everybody was asking everybody who won. We didn't even know. Everybody had you know, I know I didn't even see the drop of the puck, so a lot of the guys were right out of it and didn't even see the game. That word hadn't even been mentioned today and good for them, and congratulations and we'll just have to work in our next victory and then we might see them.

PAT BURNS: Bad decisions. We were making bad decisions. We all acknowledged it after. We were making bad decisions. They were as much as we talked about a rush team earlier before the series started, they have changed. They have now a dump team; they dump the puck in and chase it on you. So we had to adjust and we made bad decisions with the puck. That's the only thing. I don't think that it was any big, big difference. Their backs are up against the wall. They are definitely going to go in all desperation. You have to expect that. You have to know that. We battled it off for 40 minutes and you know, and Marty again made us look brilliant. Then away we went.

PAT BURNS: Yeah. (Laughs). We heard everything else all year long; whether we had turned the corner on it, we don't know. But John MacLean and Bobby Carpenter, both of them have been really keying on that point a lot too lately. We have been talking about things and it's probably maybe a little bit better. We're trying to simplify things; not trying to make things too difficult. Simplify it and that's how you are going to get the goals.

PAT BURNS: Why should we? There's no orders. There's nobody that -- that's experience on the hockey club. Why should we talk about something when you have not arrived to that point yet. I guess John Muckler said that he was upset that I criticized the Senators. I didn't criticize the Senators. That question was asked me about the Stanley Cup. I said we don't talk about the Stanley Cup. That's all I said. I said we refuse to talk about it because we're not there yet. You can't talk about something unless you are there yet. Once you are there then you can talk about it. So it's not a question of a going order or whatnot. Why the hell talk about it? If we do get there, that's all we're going to talk about, so let's talk about Conference Finals before we get there.