NHL STANLEY CUP FINALS: STARS v DEVILS

June 10, 2000

Larry Robinson

COACH ROBINSON: Oh, I am sure there will be. I think there is tightness on both parts. I think if -- maybe "tight" is not, a little tentative. Obviously, everybody knows what is at stake. I mean, it is no secret that -- these are all huge games. If you are not a little bit nervous, you are not a little bit uptight, then you don't care. These are important games, and mistakes are usually costly, unless you have got goaltending like we had the other night, and then they can cover up for a lot of mistakes. But they are human. So I am sure there is a little tightness there.

COACH ROBINSON: No, I don't think so. I think there is still a lot of importance involved. I think there was a lot of distractions for us going home, having a lot of family, and the possibility of winning it on home ice, everything else. I think it got to our guys a little bit. But the bottom line is you have still got to go out and play. We have got to get rid of all of our distractions and all of our thoughts about the end result, and just play the game.

COACH ROBINSON: Sometimes your greatest asset can be your biggest downfall too. If you are a goal scorer, you know, you put so much pressure on yourself to score the goals that you don't normally do the things that you do in regular time. You put so much pressure on yourself, you become almost brain dead, and I think a lot of that happened in the overtime. I think guys just got so uptight and so focused and so nervous about making a mistake that we made mistakes, and you can't make mistakes in overtime like that. I think we had great opportunities to score, and guys just tightened up a little bit.

COACH ROBINSON: Not like one-on-one where I said to Randy the reason that you didn't play and so on so forth. I think in Randy's case it wasn't so much what he did. He had a really good -- he came out and had a really good first shift. Then they didn't get on the ice because of matchups, and whatever, for a while, and then he just didn't really get into the flow of the game. Then, once we got into overtime and everything, he had been sitting so long. I didn't think it was fair to him at that point to put him out there being cold and stiff and everything else. That is the reason why he didn't really get out there. But speaking to Bobby, no reason to. He played a great game. He did all the things that he was supposed to do, except I think the only thing that concerned all of our centermen is that our faceoffs were not up to par. Any time you are 32% in a game, that means the other team had the puck probably 3/4 of the time. You don't win a lot of games doing that.

COACH ROBINSON: Well, I think emotions probably will overplay the fatigue factor. We were able to get a good rest. I am sure they did the same thing. As long as you get the fluids in you and you get your sleep when you can, then I think emotions and the energy that is created by the importance of the game tonight will not really be a factor as far as fatigue is concerned.

COACH ROBINSON: A lot of the times faceoffs are more mental than technique or anything else. I think if you go in there, and if you are positive about what you are doing, you have a better chance than if you are just going in with a negative thought. I think we just go in more as -- with the thought that this is just another routine thing and we don't bear down. We don't concentrate on it. That is something that we have got to do a better job of doing.