NHL EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: DEVILS v SENATORS

May 13, 2003

Martin Brodeur

John Madden

MARTIN BRODEUR: That was kind of a turning point. The first goal we kind of didn't play great. Rafy just went to the guy, he kind of made almost a breakaway. Second time around when we turned the puck over again I think Whitey really stayed poised; didn't panic either. That kind of made me feel pretty good knowing that Hossa had one play and has to shoot. He's a great shooter. I think I'd rather have a guy shooting down the wing than pass across. I made the save, was able to control the rebound; also was able to make a big difference.

MARTIN BRODEUR: Definitely. I think it is a team that's so skilled defensively it's hard to shut down. I mean, if we keep it like today, like shots from the outside even though they get some quality chances I think when you don't give up odd-man rushes and 2-on-1s and breakaways, I think it's going to make my job easier. Even though I get more chances guys are coming out of the corner when everybody takes their man and I have to take the shooter. It makes my job a lot easier. I think we did a great job. Even though they had a lot of chances I was able to get myself in good position at most of the chances they had.

MARTIN BRODEUR: Well, we didn't expect that at all. I think we wanted to get off to a good start, next thing you know we have to kill 4 penalties, definitely, it was a great way I think we didn't get much of great chances in the penalties that we had to kill and it was important for us that we came through for that and definitely we came here for one thing: Winning one game. We accomplished that feat and now we feel pretty good about ourselves. Knowing that the way that they got to us with their offense, it's scary. We're going to need to be good, really good in our own building. Now the pressure is off a little bit for them. They don't have to play in front of their fans that are demanding a lot and they are going to go and be warriors. They were against Philly and the Islanders. I don't expect them to be different against us.

JOHN MADDEN: We did a lot of good things tonight. Like Marty said though we took a lot of penalties in the opening ten minutes of the game which really put us back on our heals. Good news was we killed it and gained some momentum out of it.

MARTIN BRODEUR: Well, I don't know about that, but you know what, I try to play well for my team. I like to be the best that I can be every time I go out there and, hey, what people think about me I can't really control if it's good or bad. Definitely the way you are talking it is pretty good, I guess. I just want to perform for my team and enjoy what I do and so far with ten years in my career there's nothing better that I can do for a living; it is great I just -- hopefully it is going to continue for a long time.

JOHN MADDEN: It was just a clear attempt by Jay Pandolfo. Actually I was just chasing the puck down and it slowed up real nice. I saw Lalime start to come out of the net. He decided otherwise -- it's funny I thought the defensemen, had he stayed on his feet, the play wouldn't have transpired like it had. I would have passed it -- but he dove and I was able to get my skate in front of his stick which blocked that and then I hung on for a little bit and I was trying -- just trying to hit the net. I didn't have any clue where I was shooting it except glove site. I don't even know where it went in the net.

JOHN MADDEN: Well, we have had performances like this before and gone back and had a terrible one following it up. We have also had good ones and got on a roll. Right now I think we just have to build in the good stuff. We did learn from the stuff that we can do better and come out with the same type of effort that we had in the first period. In the third period I thought we sat back a little bit too much but most teams do that when you have a two, three goal lead, you sit back a little bit and try not to get involved in odd man rushes or something like that.

MARTIN BRODEUR: I think that's just him talking about it. For the fours years that I have been a Devil I can't remember us having a real loud year in terms of you know, high scoring forwards or guys winning awards and stuff like that, excluding Marty, he has always been mentioned as our superstar, and I think we only had Scotty and Marty go to the All-Star Game so we don't have very many guys that are in the public eye as much as the Ottawa does.

JOHN MADDEN: I didn't think that they were overconfident or cocky in any way. I thought that the 4 penalties that were taken in the opening ten minutes of the game kind of shifted the momentum a little bit. Obviously if they score one or two, we're back on our heals even more, but we killed those penalties and obviously Marty had to make some great saves for us for us to get through that. We felt good about ourselves and we got -- everybody was into the game then because we were rolling lines. We had no choice but to roll lines; when you are killing that many penalties, guys that normally kill penalties got a chance to kill penalties; when you are rolling and playing you stop thinking. That's what we were doing. How satisfying was this? Obviously when -- our objective when we came into this building was to get one. Obviously if you get the first one you try get greedy and try to get the second one. In this particular case we got what we wanted. We're satisfied, but you know, as we know from the past we have been up and down before and this series is far from over. It's 1 -1. They are an unbelievable hockey team that's going to come out and play even harder. We have seen that in the Philly series an the Islander series that they can play in other buildings just as well as they play home.