NHL EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: DEVILS v SENATORS

May 14, 2003

Pat Burns

COACH BURNS: Well, I think the way you specify "in today's game" is, I think, the key word, more than ever now. Because of the styles of teams, the way they play, the I guess the amount of mistakes that are made, usually when you make a mistake in your own end, with the quality -- you know, we always say the skilled players, there's a lot of skilled players on the ice. You see it in practice every day where a player will do something. But the goaltenders now are much sharper, much bigger. The coaching part of the game is a little bit advanced, a little bit more. I think every team, amazingly, has a goaltender coach. Most of them are from Quebec, which is good. I think a lot of credit has to go to Francois Allaire and Patrick Roy. I had Francois and I realized back then how important he was, and I realize now more than ever, I would say he would be one of the prime guys that changed the philosophy of goaltending over the course of the years. A lot of people here probably don't know Francois. He and Patrick Roy were probably the tandem that started all this; and, of course, his brother does a tremendous job in Phoenix, too, who really helped Shamburg improve. And we have Jacques Caron, who as we know, has been with Marty ever since then. But I think these guys really changed, Phil Meer, I must mention, in Ottawa, with Lalime. These guys have changed. Again, all of these names, they are French-Canadian guys who really brought this situation into perspective where they changed the philosophy of goaltending. Goaltenders are much bigger. It's not just a position anymore. It's something when you were a kid growing up, the worst skater was the goaltender usually; or the guy who couldn't stand up, we would always stick him in the nets and hope the puck would hit him. Now it's a position where it's very technical, it's refined. They have their own video sessions now, it's gotten to a point for that. So I think that position was become more and more important. And in the playoffs, if you look, it's not very hard to go back and look at how past performances of teams have won, or lost, won or lost, and it often has to do with the performance of the goaltender.

COACH BURNS: You know, that's easy because if you're looking at it from a perspectives, you say: Oh, they got the first goal they won the game; oh, they got the first goal and they won the game. There's a lot of situations in the course of the year with we got the first goal and didn't win the game, and there's a lot of times where we did and we lost the game. So I don't really look at that. I look at how the flow of the game is going. If we had scored in overtime in Ottawa, which I thought we did not play that bad, if we had scored the goal in overtime, we would not even be talking about this. It just happens they scored on a one-shot goal in overtime and all of a sudden we feel that's important. I think it's important momentum-wise for a team to have that confidence, especially ourselves, with the experienced team that we do have. Getting that first goal, we know it doesn't mean that much. I think that's probably what you could say. We know that things, even at 2-0 last night, we knew that nothing was won been yet.

COACH BURNS: You know what, the matching has not been a factor in this series, and I don't think it can and I don't even think it will be. I don't think that it's been something that has been made the difference. Funny you say that, because when I think about it now, there's never really many times, maybe at the end of a period, that we might make sure we have the proper defense of guys out there. But I didn't feel, and maybe Jacques will say different, but I didn't feel that matching made a difference so far in the series and I don't think it will. I think that playing a team that plays like us, four lines, he's got to get his good players out there, and so, what are you going to do? That part of it, I don't think the matching -- maybe this is Game 2 and I'm ahead of the game a little bit, so that might be something down the line. But in the last minutes of a period or something or an important faceoff, yes, but I didn't see matching have anything really to do with it.

COACH BURNS: Well, he's one of those players that you wonder what he's made out of, where he comes from, is it this planet or not. We're unsure some nights. Scotty is probably a real fine-tuned athlete, and I've been fortunate have guys -- I don't like to compare -- I'm not comparing, I think Raymond was a different player. Bourque was a different player, but in the same situation; Larry was another guy who played up to those ages. Those guys are just so focused. And 24 minutes is not a lot. We say it's a lot, but it's not a lot for him. I was kind of glad when I saw that this morning; that he only had played that, because in the Tampa series and the Boston series, he was logging 27, sometimes 28 minutes a game. So I think when we get him down below 25, 24, 22, that's a plus for us and a plus for him. There's other ways to keep it; he's not on the ice today. We find ways and find times to say, "Hey, you're not going," and sometimes we'll leave it up to him.

COACH BURNS: All we did was win a game. That's all we did. We bounced back from a shaky start in Game 1 and we came back and won the game last night. This team that we are playing is much too good to think that we have an advantage now. I don't believe we do. I think as the series is going on, I said it is going to be a long series and I still believe that. We accomplished some good things last night. To say that we are doing it on purpose to hurt somebody, I disagree with that, and I watched again today and I don't believe that. Turner is not that type of player. I don't think he tried to do anything. You always cry foul when you lose. I do, too. That's part of complaining, I guess. So, I think we always do that. But I don't think Turner, and anybody who knows him, knows that he's not that kind of player.

COACH BURNS: Well, as the local guys here now know, some nights it took a lot of convincing because it wasn't always that great. It wasn't always those games, we thought when we were at home, we had bad second periods or bad third periods and we had to come-from-behind to win a game. I think that this team, in the playoffs so far, has really shown up every single game at home and really tried to play and do the right things. You know, it's not always easy to do the right things. It's hard. But when you do the right things, it's usually because they are right.

COACH BURNS: The way we stick to what we want to do, I think that's it. We don't really change from the way we play at home to the way we play on the road. We don't really change. And when we do, that's when we have problems. I think a team has to play the same way day-in and day-out because you're at home. And that's why some people sometimes don't understand how come they can't win on the road or how come they don't win well or they don't play well when they play lesser teams at home, it's because they play a different way. They feel if you cheat at this time of year -- cheating means that you cheat out of the zone or you try to be on the wrong side of the puck or you leave the zone without the puck. Those are all cheating methods of players that feel that we can get away with it because we are at home. If we do that, we are just another hockey club.

COACH BURNS: You know, I've talked about it a lot during the course of the season because he's that type of player. Brian is a competitive little guy. When people look at this little guy go -- to be with him every day in practice and in a game, you get to appreciate a lot of things that he does. He knows the game well without the puck. He can contribute offensively. Not afraid of too much. The other players, the big players on the other side, and they always usually show their colors. When Brian goes in the corner and they take an extra step to hit him and they feel good about themselves because they hit Brian Gionta, but it doesn't bother Brian too much. I've seen him throw the gloves and surprise the hell out of people, as we saw him do a couple of times this year. I've seen a lot of times teams not knowing him, they think, "Oh, I'm going to hit this guy because he looks good." He's an easy target for that, but he responds well every time.

COACH BURNS: Were you at the game yesterday? Well, I think a couple of papers -- if somebody can lend him some papers or something. I went through this all yesterday. Those questions were all answered yesterday. I'm staying status quo.

COACH BURNS: No. Like I explained, I think the advantage comes at the end of a period, at a situation, a certain time in the game where you feel that maybe you have a certain player that will make rise to the occasion on the other side where you might have to spend a little extra time. But I don't think the forwards has been as much as the defense -- like Jacques, I know he tries to match his big defense against our offensive lines and we try to do the same thing. But I don't think the forward lines were really a question. We were never really worried at one point in time when had a said was out there whether we had the proper line out there. We were fortunate, like I said, we have two good checking lines and we are fortunate to have that. If we have Pascal, who played one of the best games I thought since he's been a Devil last night, really be able to use those two combination lines, to be out there no matter what.