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NHL STANLEY CUP FINALS: OILERS v HURRICANES

June 7, 2006

Peter Laviolette

RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA: Game Two

Q. (Inaudible) Rod Brind'Amour, because he cheats on the faceoffs and linesmen won't kick him out, your response?
COACH PETER LAVIOLETTE: I don't know, I guess I don't have one. I think he wins 82% of his draws because he's really good on faceoffs and he's been really good his whole career. I don't see him playing favoritism towards anybody, the referees, but (laughs).
Q. How do you guard against little overconfidence when you see the circus that's going on around with the Edmonton Oilers and their netminding, how do you address that?
COACH PETER LAVIOLETTE: We didn't play very well. I mean that should guard against overconfidence right there, so nobody is real happy with our game. I don't think we're an overconfident group to begin with, but take the score out of it, which is extremely important, and look at the game, we have no reason to be overconfident. We have got to play, we have got to play a lot better.
Q. What are the things you think you did well that you'd like to keep going in this game?
COACH PETER LAVIOLETTE: I think, well, there's a lot of things I think we need to do better first, but we came back. I mean, there's not a lot of teams that can come back from 3-0 and certainly under these circumstances and in this environment. I think it speaks a lot to the character in the locker room the fact that we have done it all year long.
We won a game. I'd like to see us win another one. That's what I am happy about, I am happy that we won the game. It's about winning right now. That was a big win for us.
Q. You have partially answered the question but you have been a terrific comeback team in these playoffs, from the series deficits to game deficits, you don't want to put yourself in that position. It must give you a sense of confidence to know that you have had that intangible all playoffs?
COACH PETER LAVIOLETTE: Yeah. Like I said before, I mean, it's not that you don't want to put yourself in those situations, you are in those situations a lot. I mean, a pretty good team in the National Hockey League wins just over 50% of their games and a real good team wins 60% of their games, so that means 50% or slightly under or 40% of the time you are going to be behind. And you have got to figure out a way how to come from behind and I think that is what is been impressive. It's not, you read that we come out slow or a lot of times you just don't get the lead or you are playing an opponent who is pretty good, so you have to fight back in those games, and that's, I think, something that our team has confidence in because we have done it in the regular season.
If you followed our team through the year in the regular season we have done it quite a few times in the playoffs. We have done it quite a few times; a lot of leadership and a lot of character in the room.
Q. Do you expect the Oilers forwards to be going not just hard at Cam Ward's crease but maybe overaggressive into his crease and try to crash him and rattle him a little bit tonight?
COACH PETER LAVIOLETTE: If they do I am sure we'll get power plays, which is exactly what we're looking for. I can't control what they are going to do. You know, Andrew Ladd didn't crash the crease; he got hammered into the crease by Bergeron. It was clear cut if you watch it. If that's the action that they want to take, hopefully we'll go on the power play.
Q. Willie has been compared to players like Claude Lemieux and Esa Tikkanen during these playoffs. Are we close in those comparisons, what kind of growth have you seen from him from when you first saw him before the lockout when he played for you at the end of that season?
COACH PETER LAVIOLETTE: I don't know, I am not a big comparison type of guy. I don't see Willie as a real pest, I see him as a really good hockey player. He's strong on the puck. It's not that he's a mouthy or he plays dirty. I don't think anyway. But I do think he's a really good two-way player. That's why his minutes are where they are at. Really they are just short of Rod Brind'Amour. It's because of he's a situational player. When you start playing in all situations your minutes go up and I think in order to play in those situations you have to have the confidence of the coach that those situations will get handled in the right way and he does that.
I think for our staff and our organization, whatever we ask of him, he's able to help out and do it. As far as this year goes, obviously it's been a career year for him. He's having a real good playoffs to this point. And might just be a natural progression as well, he's been around for a while in the league but still only 24 years old, still a young player, and sometimes it takes time to become more of a dominating player on a team or in the league, I think he's taken steps this year to be that type of a player.
Q. Talk about the difference between heading into Edmonton at 1-1 versus 2-0, and kind of the mental shift or advantage that it would give you guys to hold serve at home?
COACH PETER LAVIOLETTE: Last series against Buffalo wasn't about momentum, it was about desperation. I don't know how this series will go but I am just telling you that whatever team -- it didn't seem like the team who won the game went out and won the next one because they had the momentum. It was more, I think, that the team that was more desperate because they felt like they were up 1-0 or down 1-0, that's the team that was more desperate, was the one that ended up winning the next game. So I don't really know how to play into those numbers. We should be, I guess, agitated at the way we played. I don't know if that will work towards the desperation part of it.
Q. I just wonder, you are preparing to face either Ty Conklin or Jussi Markkanen in net for the Edmonton Oilers, you don't want it to be a distraction for the players, but is it a bit of a hang-up for the coaches?
COACH PETER LAVIOLETTE: Maybe for him making the choice, not for me and not for our team anyway. A goaltending change, really doesn't affect our team, and our plan and what we need to do in order to be successful. The onus falls more back on the goaltender. It affects them more than it does us. We plan to try and generate offense in the manner in which we have generated it all year long and then it comes down to whether or not the puck gets stopped. So we need to do what we do to make things successful.
Who is in there, to us, really, is irrelevant. Then it is a matter of personnel. That's why, you know, when we lost Erik Cole for instance, you can put somebody else back in there but it's whether or not they can play to Erik Cole's level. So it's more we need to play our game and do our thing and then what happens, it's up to them. It's not up to us. We just need to play our game.

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