NHL EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: DEVILS v SENATORS

May 17, 2003

Martin Brodeur

John Madden

Scott Stevens

JOHN MADDEN: Very unselfish play by him. I thought it was the right play to make, 2 on 0 like that, get the goal, moving the goalie. Moving a little bit really work out well. It was very unselfish of him hitting me with the right play.

SCOTT STEVENS: There's no question it's nice to be up 3 to 1 instead of 2-2. But we know they are a dangerous team and they are capable of winning a lot of hockey games so we still have to get this fourth game which is always tough, we know that. That's what we are preparing for right now.

SCOTT STEVENS: I can't say -- I guess we have taken control with the lead, but it's always been close on the ice and hard fought and today we had to find a way to win. It wasn't easy. It wasn't looking very good for a while. They put a lot of pressure on us, but once again, we came together and had a big third, end of the second one and had a big third and got the win today. We pushed. We are in pretty good shape. Like I said we know that team is capable of putting a good string together and winning some games.

MARTIN BRODEUR: Definitely it's nice to have the support of the fans and definitely when you play in your building it's always nice when they say good stuff about you. You don't expect on the other side when you go out in Ottawa to be real nice. Just a game I guess, but it is definitely nice when people like the way you play and they show it.

MARTIN BRODEUR: They came out really stronger in the first period and in the first part of the second also, and that's where they got the lead from. For the most part I thought we did a good job. I definitely had to make a few big saves, but you know, we really took over the game after that. We settled down. I think Jay's goal was -- really took the pressure off. We realized enough is enough, let's play structured hockey. We did that in the third. Special teams were awesome. That's one of the reasons why we were able to come through in certain situations, having a goal-killing a penalty and scoring two powerplay goals, I think, so it's pretty good.

MARTIN BRODEUR: A little bit. It's part of Playoff hockey; everybody needs to chip in. As a goalie you don't need to do it for 60 minutes but sometimes doing it for five or ten minutes sometimes is just enough to wake everybody up to say, let's go. It goes the same way when you are not playing well and your team is playing really well in front of you, kind of gives you a kick in the butt a little bit and you move forward.

JOHN MADDEN: Absolutely. He has got the hot stick right now. I don't know, it was a nice play. He's scoring right now for us and getting some huge goals for us. He's always gotten the chances and always been in the right position to get the chances, but now he's getting the bounce.

MARTIN BRODEUR: I didn't face these shots so it's kind of hard to comment on them. Definitely we took advantage of some breaks. They give us a little room to make some shots and we hit them. I think the first one, I think -- I don't think he saw it much. Another goal, same way, guy -- defenseman tried to block it in front of him. When the puck doesn't hit you, it doesn't hit you. It was one of these nights for him, I guess. We'll take it. We know he's going to be better in the next game.

SCOTT STEVENS: We're going to see what they came at us with in the first period here; that's what they are going to do in Ottawa in front of their home crowd. We have to learn from that, how they came out and make sure we're ready for it. They are going to throw everything at us. Have their defense pinching. I hope that was their best we saw earlier today.

MARTIN BRODEUR: It was -- just tried to recover a little bit. I don't know exactly how the play happened. Puck didn't get to him and I think it was Arvedson that got it. Shouldn't tried to bide the time for somebody to help me out. He was moving away, moving away, I was stretching, I was stretching. I couldn't wait for him to let it go. I couldn't really stretch anymore. I was stretched out there. And when I made the save we had time to recover and get the rebound out of the way.

SCOTT STEVENS: We just take one game at a time. We're playing a really good hockey club, best we have seen in the Playoffs. To close Tampa we had to go in overtime in our own building. It's going to be very difficult in that building with their fans behind them. They are going to start like they did today. We're just thinking about winning the next hockey game and going from there.