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NHL WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: SHARKS v CANUCKS

May 18, 2011

Todd McLellan

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA: Game Two

Vancouver Â– 7
San Jose - 3

THE MODERATOR: Questions.

Q. Todd, would it be fair to say the entire complexion of this game changed with Eager's hit followed by his tripping call or is that oversimplifying?
COACH McLELLAN: I think that's oversimplifying. They had more battle in their game than we did. This time of the year when you have more battle and more of a tenacity to your game, you're going to win.
Ben Eager's hit, it started a bit of a frustration level on our team. We didn't handle it very well. It obviously grew from there.
But I thought one of the turning points, in my opinion, was their third goal. We have a set forecheck. We've practiced that since September. A player gets skated, all of a sudden it's in your net. You can't chase this team. They're too good. You have to play with him or ahead of them. From there it started to unravel.

Q. Do you believe your team lost its composure at times in the third period?
COACH McLELLAN: Yup. Without a doubt. I'm not going to sit here and try to protect them. We lost composure, we were frustrated. As I said earlier, when you're second, you tend to be frustrated.
We've got some work to do. We've got some guys that need to ask themselves some questions, answer them, and pull the skates a little tighter.

Q. What's happening right now with this team?
COACH McLELLAN: We're playing against very good opponents. Tonight, in looking back, comparing it to Game 1, I thought we did skate better though. I thought we created more of a forecheck tonight.
But the ability to sustain, it wasn't there again. All of a sudden you're chasing the game. You have to perfect the minor details. And they're doing a much better job of it, whether it's faceoff coverage, whether it's a set forecheck, whether it's just their first goal. Penalty killing, it's on their tape, we're 20 seconds left into a penalty kill, we want to play one-on-one in the neutral zone.
They're doing a much better job of those little details than we are right now.

Q. It was a one-goal game at the end of two periods. Not that you saw this coming, but did you already feel your team was being out-battled at that point?
COACH McLELLAN: Yeah. I still thought there was room for improvement. You know, we talk in numbers as coaches. We didn't have enough players. We had some guys that really showed up and committed themselves to the team. Then we had some guys that weren't sure.

Q. How close is this from either becoming a series or slipping away?
COACH McLELLAN: Well, we're going home. A real wise guy once told me that you're never really, really in trouble in a series till you lose a game at home. We haven't done that and we don't plan on doing that.
We've got to regroup. We've got to find some composure, take our battle level up. With that being said, as I mentioned, there's a few people in our group, and I'm not going to hide them anymore, they have to ask themselves whether or not they want to keep on competing.
I'll hide that part. You guys get to decide.

Q. Tell me what you want Eager to do?
COACH McLELLAN: Ben Eager is one of our faster forwards, one of our more physical forwards. I think he has the ability to win battles and create scrums. I do believe the other team knows when he's on the ice. The fact that Ben played a lot more minutes tonight was rewarding for us.
Now the negative. He can't march to the penalty box on an ongoing basis. The tradeoff obviously didn't work in our favor tonight.

Q. Altogether, not what you wanted?
COACH McLELLAN: I'd like him to play that game, without going to the penalty box. Simple as that.

Q. The Marleau fights, what impact did that have on the game?
COACH McLELLAN: I'm not sure it had a major impact on the game at all. I thought maybe at that point we got a little frustrated because we wanted to even the score. That was Ben Eager taking a run at one of the Sedins. It probably grew from there a little bit.
But at this point, you've got to have your emotions in check. You've got to maintain some composure. You're never really out of it. We saw that last night. I think we talked about the Boston game. You're never really out of it. We've been down four and been able to fight back.
Composure all the way through the night is important, sticking to a game plan.

Q. You wanted to be more physical, slow them down?
COACH McLELLAN: Who are we talking about?

Q. (No microphone.)
COACH McLELLAN: We wanted to win more battles than we won in Game 1. If you want to call that physical, yeah. I think we were better than we were in Game 1. Believe it or not, we lost, whatever the score was, 7-3, we were a better team tonight than we were in Game 1, less the frustration and the composure, taking penalties.

Q. We're in the conference final. Your team was here last year. Some of the guys you talk about are veteran guys who played the Olympics, been around a long time. We're talking about making fundamental mistakes. What gives?
COACH McLELLAN: I'm not sure. We haven't made that many heading in here. We wouldn't have got to this point. We wouldn't have got by that Red team we played last week.
Doing that right now, I think we have to give credit to the opponent and we have to remember they're playing awfully hard, they have a good game plan, and they're executing it better than we're executing ours. They're playing a little bit harder than we are. As a result, you tend to make more mistakes, you tend to get frustrated. When you get frustrated, you tend to take penalties. It's just a vicious circle. That could be one of the reasons why.

Q. Is it fair to say you'd take Eager's effort over the bad?
COACH McLELLAN: We talked about that, yeah. I'll take Ben Eager's game without the penalties any night. He was an honest guy, battled hard, skated, fought through everything.

Q. That said, do you think he crossed the line on some of those penalties? Do you expect to have him available for Game 3?
COACH McLELLAN: Absolutely, 100% available for Game 3. Didn't see him cross the line at all.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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