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NHL WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: SHARKS v CANUCKSMay 21, 2011Alain VigneaultSAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA: Practice Day THE MODERATOR: Questions. Q. I'm going to ask anyway. Ballard and Alberts, will they both be in tomorrow? COACH VIGNEAULT: We'll see tomorrow. Q. I know you don't like to fully disclose injuries, but in light of the hit on Aaron Rome, how is he doing today? Any prognosis? COACH VIGNEAULT: You guys know we don't discuss injuries, so... Not going there. Q. Can you talk about the impact. You can lose two players through the course of an entire playoffs, but to lose two this far in one game in a series, that's a little bit different. COACH VIGNEAULT: Well, it's something that we have to deal with. I do believe that as a group we've dealt with a lot of injuries this year. We've been able to handle it real well. Right now I'm confident that we're going to do the same thing. One of the things that we have given ourselves is more depth on defense. We've really worked at making sure that the guys that weren't in the lineup were staying ready and they knew that at one point or another we might need them down the road. Whoever we use tomorrow, I'm confident they're going to do real well for us. Q. How much faith do you have in Keith Ballard right now? COACH VIGNEAULT: I have a lot of faith in Keith. He has played some good hockey for us. Obviously I think that he'd probably like to have maybe a little bit bigger role on our team. I mean, nobody hides that. He's been used to more minutes in the past with the prior teams he's played with. But on this team, we feel that there are some guys right now that are playing better than him, and that's why he's getting those minutes or dressing or not dressing. He's got an opportunity probably tomorrow to step in and show us what he can do. We're confident that he'll have a good game if we need him. Q. If he steps in tomorrow, is the key for him not to make the mistake or he's a guy that likes to jump up and create? COACH VIGNEAULT: Like any other player on our team, he's got to play to his strengths, you know, let the game come to him and he'll be fine. Q. Now that you've covered Ballard, can you touch on Alberts and Chris as well, the merits about those guys? COACH VIGNEAULT: Both Andrew Alberts, obviously a bigger body, physical defenseman. And Chris Tanev, for a young man coming in, showed a lot of poise, a lot of confidence with the puck, played over 20 games with us. He was really effective during the regular season. I guess he had some really good playoffs also with Manitoba. Q. How much last night did you want to let Roberto battle? Did you think at all about putting Cory in? COACH VIGNEAULT: Never at all thought about taking him out. It was 3-0. I thought we came along at the end of that first period, had some good scoring chances. I felt we were in the game. We know that in the third period they've been struggling. They've been letting in a lot of goals. We felt if we could get one in the second that we'd make a game of it. Unfortunately we had that five-on-three where we had grade A scoring chances and met a hot goaltender. It's going to happen sometimes. But we kept pushing, plugging, came up a few minutes short. Q. Ryan set the bar real high in the last series. Can you assess his play through three games here? COACH VIGNEAULT: I mean, he's working real hard. Sometimes he's matched up Joe, sometimes he's matched up against Couture. They're working hard, generating chances. That's what I want from them. I want them to compete at both ends of the rink and I'm confident things are going to work out. Q. (No microphone.) COACH VIGNEAULT: Five-on-five, they scored their first goal of the series. So I think five-on-five we've been doing what we've talked about in our dressing room. We know how we need to play in that situation. Our specialty teams need to be better, both power-play and penalty killing. We're aware of that. We've talked about that. We've got a couple of options here that we're looking at, confident we'll be better tomorrow. Q. (No microphone.) COACH VIGNEAULT: I think he said one time he's an elite athlete. There's the answer. He can take it (laughter). Q. (No microphone.) COACH VIGNEAULT: Today was players' option. I don't know why he decided not to go. That's his call. Q. Why did you feel it necessary to bring Chris down from Vancouver? COACH VIGNEAULT: Well, at this time we've got six guys that can play, so... Always have to have a backup, I guess. Q. Would you bring him down here and not play him? COACH VIGNEAULT: Brought him down here so we'd have seven healthy defensemen. I mean, that's pretty reasonable. Pretty logical, sorry. Q. Alain, it's been reported that McGinn did not get a suspension. A, do you feel they've dodged two bullets? B, do you think justices is miss-served? COACH VIGNEAULT: I'm not going to comment on how the league interprets certain hits. Going to leave that up to them. That's all I want to say there. Thanks, guys. See you tomorrow. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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