|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
NHL STANLEY CUP FINAL: PREDATORS VS PENGUINSMay 28, 2017Peter LavioletteDavid PoilePittsburgh, Pennsylvania - Practice Day THE MODERATOR: Questions for David Poile and Coach Laviolette. Q. David, when you made the Neal trade, what were you looking for? Has he given you that and more? DAVID POILE: We were looking to change up our forwards. We always felt our goaltending, our defense was kind of driving our team. I think the Neal trade was a start to try to get more and better offensive players. Neal scored 30 goals the first couple of years, he had like 23 this year. He's an offense player that gives us a chance to be better at that end of the ice. He's pretty well provided that for us. Q. Coach, being missing Ryan Johansen, when you talk about preparing for matchups against Sidney Crosby, Malkin down the middle, how do you prepare like Colton Sissons and Calle Jarnkrok? What do you say to them to get them ready? PETER LAVIOLETTE: There's a lot of meetings that go on internally with our players. Certainly we'll miss Ryan. I don't think anybody can argue that. He was a big horse for us down the middle that was able to match up against anybody. We had to go a couple games without Ryan. Our guys responded okay. It's always, I think, Colton in that last game really stepped up. We put him in position. We've had to go without players all playoffs, from Kevin Fiala to guys missing in the lineup. Our guys have gotten it done. Certainly you're talking about a couple good centermen that we have to face. We had a couple good centermen last round that we had to face. Q. Going back to even Langway, you've had penchant for blockbuster deals. What is it about the huge trade that is so much a part of what you've been able to do over the years? DAVID POILE: I never set out to exactly do it that way. I think every situation is a little bit different. I know going way back to my Washington days, I interviewed for the job like a couple months ahead of time. I had, like, two months to prepare that if I got the job, this is what I would do. The other part there is sometimes we fall in love with our players. We probably overrate or overestimate our players. I really try with myself and our staff to be as honest as we can about the value to our players. If you go back to the Langway example that you're giving, I come into Washington with nothing invested in terms of any feelings towards the specific players and the deal. I'm clearly thinking about what I believe is the best hockey deal for the organization. It gets a little bit more difficult as you move along and you're with individual teams and players for a longer period of time. For example, Shea Weber, trading Shea Weber is not something you think about or ever really contemplate doing. Those type of trades become more difficult. Q. When you have Weber and Suter and Jones on your defense, most general managers would look at that and say, I'm set forever. Now you're at the Stanley Cup Final without any of them. DAVID POILE: We're very fortunate. When I look at what's taken place, it's remarkable we were able to trade the three players that you just mentioned and still have arguably one of the best defenses in the National Hockey League. All that credit goes to Paul Fenton, Jeff Kealty, our amateur scouts, in terms of them providing us and me specifically with the tools to make those big trades, the throw names you just mentioned. That's a huge wow that we were able to do that and still be competitive at the defensive position. Q. David, you expressed optimism on Wednesday that you thought Mike Fisher and Craig Smith could be ready for Game 1. Where do you stand now the night before? DAVID POILE: Where do we stand? PETER LAVIOLETTE: I believe all players will be able that are on the trip. Q. Coach, when you won the Cup with Carolina, you got your day with the Cup. Can you remind us what you did with the Cup that day, whether it was more like the look in people's faces when they saw it, what that meant to you to bring it to people. PETER LAVIOLETTE: It's a special day for everybody. We stayed in Carolina for a night, then went back to Massachusetts, my hometown of Franklin. There was a parade going on over the 4th of July. We had it over the 4th of July. It was good to bring it back to my family and friends from my hometown. I think that made it special. It was kind of an overnight deal. We got to share it with our friends in Raleigh, but we got to share it with all of our family members back home in Massachusetts. Q. David, vast majority of your players went through Milwaukee, your affiliate team. How do you sort of rate the importance of the Milwaukee team, what role do you see in it? DAVID POILE: It's huge for us. We have kind of a line within our organization is that the road to Nashville goes through Milwaukee. We really try to be patient, take our time with our younger players. As I said earlier, our drafting has been fantastic over the years. Again, just where we are today, as Lavi said earlier, we've had a number of injuries. We've used 18 forwards in the playoffs so far. If it wasn't for the depth that we had, the younger players that we have in Milwaukee to come up, not only to come up to fill in, but actually make a contribution, we wouldn't be here today. We believe hugely in development, the Milwaukee Admirals have been a huge part of the success to this point. Q. (No microphone.) DAVID POILE: Maybe yes, maybe no. To me, I wouldn't want it any more way. I think it's a really good way of doing it. Pekka Rinne was a great development situation, where he played a full three years in Milwaukee before we even gave him a chance to play in Nashville. Even the star players, whether it be Roman Josi, going back to Suter and Weber, they all played their time in Milwaukee. If you were to ask any of those guys in our organization, the time they spent there, I'm telling you, each one of them would say they wouldn't be near as good or successful if they hadn't had that time down in Milwaukee. Q. David, without that huge trade, Weber, Subban, do you think you're here if you don't make that trade? DAVID POILE: I think our organization was trending in the right way the last two or three years. I said earlier that we've been making a number of changes to be better offensively. Our defense has always been one of the strengths of our team. I think P.K. is a different player than Shea Weber. I think the coaches through a little bit of experimentation have found some defense pairings that are probably as good as any in the league. P.K. is a big part of why we are here today. I also need to and want to give credit to our whole team, our whole organization. We like to think we move together each step of the way in terms of the success we're having. Our goaltender has been outstanding all year. Our defense has been just terrific. Our forwards in my mind have been really improved, probably give us the chance to come to the next step, to be here today. Subban has been terrific. I think as the year has gone along, after he got through a couple of injuries, an adjustment period, he's gotten better and better with us. We look forward to him playing for us for many years. But I really think this is a team effort to get us to this point. As I said earlier, we used 18 forwards right now. Unless we're getting contributions from a lot of people, it's not happening. Q. David, it's going to sound like I'm belaboring the point. P.K. mentioned a conversation he had with you after he was traded where you invited his family and all his handlers to come down to Nashville and work with the front office. Why did you do that? Why did you feel it was important to make that invitation? Did you make that invitation in that conversation? Why was that such an important thing for you to do right off the bat? DAVID POILE: I think what we wanted to do, like we do with any player, you want to get to know them as best as possible. You want to get on the same page as them. Everybody has a different -- is different. P.K. brings a lot to the table as a hockey player and as a person, his involvement in charities. He has a lot of things going on. We obviously heard a lot about things that happened in Montreal, some good, maybe some not so good. The whole idea was to get on the same page. Just like the meeting with him, the first meeting we had, like, What are your goals? He said, To win the Stanley Cup. I said, That's what our goals are, too. If we can get that straightened away in terms of your desires to be the best hockey player you can be, and we can both work towards winning the Stanley Cup together, we've got mostly everything covered. The other parts of your life, what you do off the ice, we would like to be there to support you. I think the most important thing is that the left hand knows what the right hand is doing so there's no surprising and, to repeat again, we can support you. I don't want to say it was as simple as that, but I think it was as simple as that. We have some great people in Nashville on the business side that met with his family, his representatives, his agents, if you will, and I think from day one we've been on the same page with P.K. as to his off-ice ventures. I don't think there's been any missteps. I don't think there's been any misunderstandings. That's why I think it's been a good fit for both of us. Q. (No microphone.) DAVID POILE: I think what I meant by that is maybe some things weren't accepted or maybe communication wasn't correct or what have you. So to me the whole goal was to communicate, to just know what everybody is doing. It's no different than you and your personal life, your family. You want to be on the same page. If you don't talk, if you don't communicate, sometimes there can be some misunderstandings. Whether there was or there wasn't, I'm not trying to say there was, just for us, I wanted to make sure we were on the same page. I wanted to communicate and I wanted all different facets of P.K.'s organization, if you will, be communicating to ours, our side, so that there would be no surprises, and we could support each other. Q. David, as a manager, you've traded for a few different players who perhaps in their past organization fairly or unfairly were labeled as players who might not have fit. As a manager, do you see that as a value opportunity? Maybe is the bet there on your behalf that you have the organization and the leadership within your group to have players like that fit in in your group? DAVID POILE: Yeah, I would agree with that. Sometimes, what do they say, somebody's trash is your treasure, something like that. Again, you've got to rely on all of your people, which I always do in all of my Hockey Ops, in terms of whether you're talking about P.K. Subban or Ryan Johansen, or any other trades, these guys aren't just new to the NHL. We've known them since they were junior hockey players. Some people might have met them, might have had relationships with them. Again, to your point, you have to look at the strength of your organization as to how they could fit in, where they would fit in, whether we could enhance their role, could we embrace their skill set, what they bring to the team, involve the coaches in those decisions. For the most part, again, I think if you treat everybody correctly, you represent to them that this is the opportunity we have for you, you give them that opportunity, you continue to communicate with them, more times than not it will work out. Q. Peter, I know you hate talking about yourself, but what does this mean to you, being on this stage for a third time? Is there anything sort of secret to when you're shaping your long-term view of the season to have your team get to this point and peak at the right time? PETER LAVIOLETTE: I think everybody's excited to be here, managers, coaches, players, staff, organization, fan bases. This is why we do what we do all year, to get to this point, or to hope to get to this point, where you actually get an opportunity to play for the Stanley Cup. For me, it means a lot. I mean, two of the most memorable points in my life, if you remove family, you just leave it in a professional business, will be two trips to the Finals. One of them I'll hold close to my heart, and one of them hurts. But that's a great feeling, to be able to be here and to compete. With regard to our team and a plan, there was a lot of talk coming out of October that what was wrong and we weren't right. I kept saying internally, That's okay, it's okay to struggle a little bit, to have to work to figure out who we are as a team, who we are as a group, who is driving the bus, where the seats are, and to have to figure a way out of something. We got going in November pretty good. We were building something at that point. Even though December and some of January we were struggling a little bit, we were dealing with a lot of injuries. Not that that is an excuse, because every team has to deal with them. We were trying to move through that. I think when we got to the last third of the season, our guys had been through a lot. We had had a lot of meetings internally. We discussed and talked about things like culture and character and winning and leadership, because we had to. We had changed the seats on the bus. Things had moved around a little bit. We became stronger as a team internally. I do think we were built this year. I think it was a process. I think that that process has made us stronger, not only to get through the regular season, but to handle some of the adversity we've had to handle here in the playoffs. I know everybody gets injuries and everybody is banged up this time of the year, but when you see a kid like Colton Sissons, to see what he's gone through this year, stepping up like he did, game-clinching situation back in Nashville, Game 6. That to me is just a lot of work that's gone in by him and by a group, by a team to get to that point. More than anything, I think we were built in order to get to this point. Q. David, I'm asking you to go into your memory bank a little bit. Do you recall the 2005 draft and why you used the last pick on Patric Hornqvist? DAVID POILE: We have a really good Swedish scout by the name of Lucas Bergman, whose dad was Thommie Bergman, one of the first Swedish players to come over and play in the National Hockey League. Lucas was banging the drum really hard for Paul Fenton and Jeff Kealty to say this guy has been looked over. Had a little bit of an injury, wasn't a great skater at that time. He got his way, thank goodness. Patric was a great draft for us. Q. Peter, David mentioned earlier an experimenting process that had to take place with Mattias, P.K., Ryan and Roman. What went through that from a coaching standpoint? Why do you suppose the pairs have harmonized the way they have? PETER LAVIOLETTE: When we came out of camp, we were dealing with injuries right away. We wanted to experiment during training camp, figure out the pairings. We had already known that Ekholm and Ellis were a terrific pair. On the ice, by the eyeball they were good, by statistics they were good. We thought that would be a good pair. We never got an opportunity to see Roman and P.K. together. When they came back, we tried it a little bit. At that time we were struggling I think as a group in the month of October. As we made a change, we put Ekholm and P.K. together, we realized that that worked. Ryan Ellis had jumped up and played with Roman Josi before in previous years. They looked really good together. I think the obvious was to try to put Roman Josi and P.K. together, right? As it turned out, the numbers and the eyeball all pointed to Roman and Ryan being a terrific pair. Ekholm and Subban being a really, really big, strong, tough pair to play against. They've been able to handle a lot of minutes and a lot of big opponents. We really haven't changed from that probably in maybe five months, six months. Q. Peter, David has talked a lot about his philosophy as a general manager here. I'm curious, as a coach who has worked for several well-known GMs, what do you appreciate most about David? PETER LAVIOLETTE: I think the communication that David and I have, the relationship that we have. It's a tough business, you guys know that. When it's winning, that's all fine. Everything is good. When you go through times and periods, pockets when you're losing, I think communication is probably the biggest asset between a general manager and a coach. I first got to know David, really got to know him through the Olympic tour we put together. At the time I wasn't working. I got to spend a lot of time just talking with him about players, about systems, about ideas. The communication and the organization that I saw from him, I think it makes everybody better. Everybody has to be a little bit more organized, they have to communicate a little bit better. But our relationship I think from there grew and an interview process happened to become the head coach of the Nashville Predators. I'm fortunate to be here. When you leave a job, you never know if you're going to get another one. I don't take anything for granted. But my relationship with David, probably first and foremost, just the communication, what we share together on a daily basis is what makes it effective. Q. David, you've been a GM for the last 35 years. Just describe the whole feeling of finally making it to the Stanley Cup Final. Was there a point in time where you maybe doubted yourself? DAVID POILE: I never doubted myself (laughter). I maybe doubted if this day would ever come. I tell you, I can't believe how excited I am. As Peter said, I don't ever take this for granted. This could be my first day on the job. This is unbelievable. The turnout, how big this is, how proud I am of our franchise, our team. It's as good as anything that's ever happened to me, obviously for us, for our franchise, hockey. It's just been fantastic. I'm trying to take in every moment of it, remember it, enjoy it as best I can. Maybe after all these years, maybe I have a little bit more appreciation for this than somebody who had done it at a younger, earlier age in their career. But, believe me, I'm appreciating every moment of this. Q. What does it mean to Nashville? DAVID POILE: Are you going to come to Nashville? Come to Nashville and you'll see. Like I said to somebody earlier, you should put this on your bucket list if you don't have it. Right now we are the number one entertainment city in the United States for music, and now hockey. Our building is the loudest. These are all clichés, but it's all true. Our building is fabulous. The entertainment package that we have, both on the ice with our team and off the ice with everything that goes into a game presentation at Bridgestone Arena is second to none. I'm not working for the Chamber of Commerce, but I'm telling you, you and your friends would never regret a visit to Nashville to see a game. One of the things I didn't know about, which Peter knows about, all the ticket requests for all the friends and family that want to come. We don't have any tickets to give anybody. They're still coming because they see what's happening outside the arena. It's a tremendous atmosphere. It's second to none. It's the best in sports right now. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|