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NHL STANLEY CUP FINALS: FLAMES v LIGHTNING

May 26, 2004

Darryl Sutter

TAMPA, FLORIDA: Practice Day

Q. Iginla had another great game last night. In your mind, is he the best player in the League right now?
DARRYL SUTTER: Well, I don't think right now he is. I mean, he's been one of the best players in the League for two or three years. Now he's having -- now he's having team success so it becomes more of a magnified deal. I think the position he plays, I think you are hard pressed to find a better right-winger.
Q. Andrew Ference last night led all players with 27 minutes on the ice, when you teamed him up with Rhett they seemed to really match very good right off the bat in that Detroit series. What about his play?
DARRYL SUTTER: I prefer not to have played him that much. I think if you look at it the first period, I think I was like he was a 10- or 11-minute guy. Obviously that was too many minutes, but just the way the five-on-five and the way the matchups were that changed after the first period, I think that -- you know his minutes came down after that. Jordan, he didn't play that much with Rhett last night. I think in the first period he did. As the game went on they split a lot. I think Jordan, Andrew are guys that can play both sides and when it's a long change for one of them then you know, we just slide them over the other side of the ice so that we don't have to get both guys off, so a lot of times his minutes will go up.
Q. Martin Gelinas, this is his fourth Final series. What does the experience that he's gathered over the years bring to a team like yours that's reached the Final this year?
DARRYL SUTTER: He's a quality veteran player. He's like Andreychuk on their side. They are guys that lead by example. If you didn't know hold he was, you'd think he was 25. It's a good format for him because he's high energy, short focus, you know, these are -- like every series is like a season to him. I think for an older player that really helps.
Q. Can you talk about the importance of the first period and your team's ability to not let the other team score; not necessarily get into a fast start but not letting the other team get to a fast start?
DARRYL SUTTER: Our first period last night was not the best part of our game, so, you know, as I said after the game we had the lead, but we had to do some things better and we did them better in the second.
Q. What kind of impact has Warrener had on your team?
DARRYL SUTTER: I think he's an underrated player. He's probably the most underrated player on our team. He gets zero credit and he's our older defensemen at 28 years old, and plays against everybody's best players. He's a good Playoff player because he's a real -- he can keep it at a real discipline fashion. He doesn't take penalties, yet he's always in the tough areas. I think that -- I still look at him as a young defenseman with room to grow, and I think one of the adjustments we made with our team this year was there had always been two or three older defensemen or one older defensemen that was protecting another defensemen. At some point those players the Gauthiers and Lydmans and at some point they had to become, hey, let's get going here, you know, we are not going to get better if we have to surround you with another older player, and I think that helped our team this year, that we are bringing Rhett in as basically a young defenseman but a guy with experience.
Q. You have been around the game a long time. I wonder if you could talk about how good Jarome is in context with all the guys you have been around. And two, how much more you appreciate him now being his coach versus opposing coach for all those years?
DARRYL SUTTER: I have been around a lot of great players, coached a lot of great players. So he's one of them. He's one of them.
Q. Why is he so special?
DARRYL SUTTER: Well, probably the same reason you think he is. He's a big power guy, he's and old school player, plays a lot of minutes, plays power play, plays penalty killing, plays against big skills, play against skilled players, plays the last minute of a period, plays the first minute of a period. Healthy. Great family guy. He's from Alberta. He's good with the media.
Q. Iginla got off to real slow start if I recall correctly?
DARRYL SUTTER: Yeah, that's his -- you look at Jarome's history, he's a slow starter. It's funny because when I came to this team last year, it was right after Christmas, and then after I got there he led the League in -- I just was lucky enough to be there to watch it because that's when he plays. And even if you look this year, I think he had, I don't know, you have to ask some of the local guys, but I think he had four goals at Christmas or and maybe none at home. I don't know. It was something like that.
Q. How much credit do you give yourself though for maybe helping him get out -- remember any of those talks you had with him?
DARRYL SUTTER: We don't have a lot of talks. You reinforce with him because he's a guy that, you know, he wants support and he wants advice and he's not a guy that you have to be or that you can be hard on and help him. You have to try and just kind of help him through it. I think that, you know, the biggest reason that, you know, to go on with Jarome, the biggest reason that he's taken a step forward this year, the biggest reason is because he's assumed the leadership of the team. Before he was the face of the team, and it was the wrong sort of pressure to have on him, even in the locker room.
Well, if Jarome doesn't score we can't win. Or if it's all right if the Flames lost and Jarome had a big game. It doesn't work and it didn't work and it's unfair to the player. It has to be about the team. I think he's grabbed that. He wanted to be the captain of the team and he's assumed more of that role instead of wearing -- there's a lot of captains who wear the C. It doesn't make them the leader of the team. It's for different reasons, but he has become the leader of the team. I think that's why he's a better player.
Q. Martin Gelinas and Jarome Iginla both said yesterday after the game, 4-1 looks nice especially in the third they felt Tampa really used their speed effectively. We can't get overconfident with Game 2. Did Tampa give you a different look in the third when they started pressing with their speed?
DARRYL SUTTER: I am already done with Game 1. I am not -- you know, they know what they have to get better at and we know we have areas we have to get better at. We know how good a team they are. We know their skill. We know that they have five or six elite players. We're going to worry about us. That's how we got here. If we sat here after every game and, if I sat with the team after every game and the day after and talked about well, Detroit Red Wings or the San Jose Sharks, how much better they are going to be or how great they are, then that's not what we're about. We have to find ways for ourselves to get better.
Q. You talked about the bad ice last night. I know two teams played on that ice, but I don't want to talk about excuses, but you played the game, can it be a disadvantage or an advantage for certain kind of team you think?
DARRYL SUTTER: Well, it certainly hasn't been a disadvantage to the Lightning. I mean they had a great season so it certainly hasn't hurt them. For different players I don't know. I mean, I asked Chris Simon in San Jose after one of the games "how is the ice?" He said, "just the way I like it." So I don't know (laughs). Tony Esposito, I remember him telling me, "when you play in the Playoffs in the old days, there was no air conditioning." None of those old buildings. The ice was awful, always an inch of Snow on it and he told me that bad ice doesn't hurt the great players. He said bad ice hurts a guy like you.
(LAUGHTER). (Laughs).
Q. With the Lightning coming off their 7-game series, coach, did you plan to capitalize on the fatigue, the potential for letdown?
DARRYL SUTTER: I don't think that has any bearing on it. I think that I know even though we had the days off, we have played more games than any other team in the Playoffs and if you add in Playoff games or overtime games, we have played like 22 games almost going into last night. So I don't think it has any bearing. I think Game 7, we came off of Game 7 in Vancouver, went to Detroit and I really believe our players were still playing Game 7. That's why we won Game 1 against Detroit. They still had that mindset.
I don't think any of the players use it as any kind of an excuse or reason at all. I don't think.
Q. Tampa Bay likes to use a forward on the point on the power play. Is that something that you guys are consciously trying to take advantage of?
DARRYL SUTTER: They don't always do that. You look at the shorthanded goal we scored last night, that was a bad-ice assist. I mean, Jarome read it and between Andreychuk and Boyle, bad bounce and Jarome read it. I don't think that you know, obviously we know who is on the ice and the changes that they are going to make during the game, I mean that's our job as coaches. But do we do something different or extra for that? No. You know, we saw last series, too, where San Jose used a forward on the point.
Q. Do you have any favorite memories or general impressions of Ray Scapinello and what he has done for as long as he's done with 33 years?
DARRYL SUTTER: He's like Marty Gelinas: You didn't know how old he was. He can still fly. He is still he fastest guy out there. We get him tomorrow. He's a colorful guy still. He identifies with the players. He knows everybody's first names. He's a throwback -- he's one of the few throwback officials that are left where they can come in and straighten a lot of things out just by coming over to the bench and telling somebody, hey, you know, next time, or, you know, hey, you shouldn't do this. Guys respect him for that. That's how it used to be. You knew everybody by their first name, and a lot of the control was done between whistles just by one of the officials talking to you. That's how Scamp is. He's still a great athlete, little bugger, geez. That's a huge credit, you talk about guys, players being in the Playoffs and it being in the Finals, Scamp, you know, he's twice as old, two plus than a lot of the young linesmen. That's pretty special for him.
Q. Can you talk about the development of Robyn Regehr, how much he's progressed even from last year and how good do you think he can be?
DARRYL SUTTER: I think he's getting better in his role. I think you know, as he turned 24 -- did he turn 24 or is he still 23? Got a long ways -- he has got a long career ahead of him and you know, you wait until he's 27 or 28.

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