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NHL WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: OILERS v MIGHTY DUCKS

May 27, 2006

Randy Carlyle

ANAHEIM, CALIFORNIA: Game Five

JAMEY HORAN: First question for Coach Carlyle.
Q. Coach, seems as though you guys just can't sustain the momentum. Did you feel like the lay off was just too much to overcome to get back in gear?
COACH CARLYLE: Well, I don't think that we can use that as any kind of an excuse. I think that the first game we weren't as sharp as we needed to be. But every game after, I thought we played fairly well. And I thought we had numerous opportunities to take the games away and we only found that in one of the games. And that's the disappointing part.
You always have to give your opposition credit. They came in and took home ice advantage away from us and won all three games in our building. From that standpoint, you can't expect to win too many playoff rounds if you don't win in your own building. And that's one thing that we didn't capitalize on in this series. But the one thing that's most important for us is our work ethic from our group and our resiliency. We worked right to the end and we represented our hockey club and our organization with a strong work ethic.
Q. Looking at that then with all the young players you do have in the lineup, it seemed to be kind of a high risk/high reward given some of these young guys?
COACH CARLYLE: Again, it looks bright on paper but you have to live it. I think at times the names that you have on your roster at times didn't really come to the forefront if you don't play a solid team game because of the competitiveness of the league and the new rules a lot of the changes that have taken place. And the one thing we're proud of is our group has learned along the way. We've had some experience with our younger players. We have more younger players coming long, and this experience of the playoffs and the success and the failures should bode well for the future.
But it's going to be our responsibility as a coaching staff and as management to make sure that, you know, the bar is even set higher. Because we feel with our younger players getting this experience that we're going to push it to a higher level.
Q. Coach, what do you think of the most effective thing that Edmonton did tactically between the first and second period, or was it a tactical kind of thing? Because they seemed slow in the first period, and the second period they were more aggressive in the forechecking?
COACH CARLYLE: They were more aggressive and we turned the puck over in a couple situations that we did, and, you know, the too many men on the ice penalty, they didn't score as per se statistic-wise on it, but the player didn't get a chance to get back into the play. That was really the difference between the hockey game, and that was they scored in the power play with the too many men on the ice and we did not when we had those opportunities.
Q. So when you look at the series, if you look at everything, do you think it's just strategies or just a matter of, like you said, not taking advantage of the opportunities when you did have when you look at all the games as a whole?
COACH CARLYLE: Well, I look at the games I thought we played well in, I didn't think -- as I stated earlier, we didn't play well in the first game as far as our sharpness and effectiveness with the puck. But I thought for the other games that we carried the momentum of the hockey games and it just seemed that they'd come down, after us hunting them in their end and doing a lot of good things, we couldn't get it across the goal line. And they'd come down and have a little bit of flurry and get results from it.
Sometimes that's the veteran issue of it and other times, we were guilty of not shooting the puck enough and blocking the passing lanes and blocking shots for their group. And in the end, it was a one-goal game that beat us.
And, you know, tonight, it was probably more of a replica of the first two games. They were 2-1 hockey games and tonight they didn't score in the empty net. That was really the difference in all three games here.
JAMEY HORAN: Thank you, Coach.

End of FastScripts...

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