NHL EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: MAPLE LEAFS v HURRICANES

May 21, 2002

Paul Maurice

COACH MAURICE: Wow, by the time he got to the bench, his eye was half closed. He had just a slit left. You see that, and to me personally, having been through an eye injury, the first thing I think is that there's no blood, and that's not a good thing; that it hit square on. You just get a sick feeling, I'll tell you that. But he played his best game of the playoffs after, and I think that's a real statement for him. Great that he could score a goal, in basically his hometown, though the people of King City won't be happy to see that. He could not see a whole lot for a while, I think. They drained it after the first and kept icing it through the game. I thought he played a great game.

COACH MAURICE: It was a clearing attempt and I think it caught him, I'm not sure, but it definitely caught him flush. Like I said, by the time he got to that bench, at that point I didn't think he was going to be able to finish. There was not a lot of eye there to be seen when he came to the bench.

COACH MAURICE: Yeah. (Smiles). You can quote me on that one. We've played so many now, it's interesting, because it's such a quiet room before you go into those overtime periods. They look like they have played a game, but there is definitely a calm in that locker room before we go into overtime.

COACH MAURICE: After arrival, prior to our first team meeting.

COACH MAURICE: There's really no way of knowing that. There's no way to know.

COACH MAURICE: Both very solid. We had some concerns with a couple of things they were doing through the neutral zone, especially Sundin swinging to the wide lane. It's just that he moves so fast for a big man. Archie made some great plays, and made it a little interesting back there with some of his breakouts. But he made some great saves tonight.

COACH MAURICE: Well, he's now officially the best soccer player on our team. A few of the European fellows who played soccer before the game made a big issue with that. He's always been that big-game guy. He looks forward to those. It's his 21st season, and I imagine the big games are a lot more fun for him to play sometimes, than a mid-December or mid-January game. But that being said, he still shows up for that like it's no different. He's always had that, and at this point in his career, he loves those kinds of games when there's something on the line. He's so on, on the bench, in the things he picks up and he notices. To appreciate with him, you need to spend time with him on a daily basis. You almost need to stand on the bench there and listen to what he says, the timing of what he says, the things he picks up that are happening on the ice. It's invaluable.

COACH MAURICE: That's true. Ron Francis, his personality, it's our team's personality. It has taken on Ron Francis's personality. It's quiet, hard-working, very honest on most nights. I know our team has given a Ron Francis effort over the course of the season.

COACH MAURICE: It's an old friend. We've done it so often that it's something that you know. I don't think there's a swagger going in, but there's an understanding of what's going to happen when that puck drops. Part of the lesson that we've tried to learn over the course of these playoffs is something I think we learned of Game 3 of the New Jersey series; going into the other team's home and we learned from that. We didn't perform well in that Game 3. In overtime, we've done it so often now that I think there's nothing particularly surprising about going into it again. I'm not sure if you could call it a confidence. It's sudden death; so there can only be so much confidence to that label, you know. But there's a familiarity that I think brings a calm.

COACH MAURICE: Well, maybe for Archie. I think all that our conditioning really allows us to do is play a pretty consistent game. There was a point where we got into that overtime that I started to get to the point again, as we did the last overtime game. I knew I was going to have to start rotating that fourth line in more and reading the next shift. Both teams kind of run their benches in similar fashions in terms of minutes.

COACH MAURICE: Yes, we don't spend a lot of time in the year looking at the shot clock. I think there's a certain acceptance of a game. As a team, sometimes it may be difficult but we've got very good speed. We would like to establish our transition game and our speed game, but it's very difficult to do that in this series. The key there is that once you've recognized that it's not going to be there, that you don't keep trying to force it. You generate speed from underneath and in some ways, accept the game that's being played, and play it.

COACH MAURICE: Critical. Penalty kills, those guys come out, they give us great energy shifts, five-on-five and those are three of our penalty killers along with Brind'Amour, and those are key turning points, the ability to have a penalty kill. They have been very, very good. Great, great group on the bench, too. When you talk about three, not low maintenance, no maintenance guys, you don't have to hold their hand if their ice time is not up. I don't know how many times over the last three years Daniels has sat on the bench for eight minutes and gone out and done a great job killing penalties and Adams has done the same thing, sat on the bench and still come out at a good pace.