Paul Maurice addressed the media after his team’s 3-2 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference semifinal series.
On Sergei Bobrovsky’s standout performance:
I think you need your goaltender to win you a game every series. He did that tonight.
I don’t think it was easy at the start for him. Certainly, the way we played in front of him for the first 10 minutes was challenging, and then he built.
You get behind the bench some nights, and you get a feel for your goaltender, going, “Man, he is just not getting beat again.” That is what he gave our team.
On the message at the first intermission:
Nothing funny. I had my mic on from that quest for the Cup. My language was no good.
We talked about the idea that you don’t get to own every game. In the first 10, we were twice shorthanded. That was theirs. That was their push.
The Lundell goal was huge in this game. At this point, you are going, “This could be 12-0.” They are on us. That goal is big.
There was a real strong push there in that middle part, and then we just settled. They are going to be good. They are going to get their chances. They are going to make their plays. They are rolling tonight. Just stay in the fight.
For me, it is perspective. That is five games in nine nights with as intense an emotional pressure as you can put on a hockey team. This isn’t the New Jersey-Rangers series where the teams are 11 miles apart. We have been on an airplane for a while. We didn’t think we had much in our legs tonight.
It was just about character. It was just about fighting through it and battling the hard things that happened. And some of that is self-inflicted.
We beat it up a little bit and got above it a couple of times. We missed some routes. We missed some checks. It wasn’t a perfect game for us by any means, but I didn’t expect that from my team. I didn’t expect them to be perfect tonight. I just want them to stay in the fight.
That is what they did.
On whether he could’ve asked for a better start to the series than this:
No, but in some ways, it is inconsequential. The originating idea is that we need to do everything we possibly can to create a Game 7. All we have done now is be pretty sure there could be a Game 6. That is it. Just leave it.
In each game, it is one shot. It is just inside the bar. They had so many good chances.
Let’s just call it even last game. It is still two inches 15 times a game — inside the post, outside the post, off a goalie’s blocker. We had a run of about four or five chances in about a shift and a half there when the Staal shift came out second. None of those went. They get an incredible slot shot three minutes later.
On Eetu Luostarinen’s forecheck leading to the first goal and his performance level on a line with Anton Lundell and Sam Reinhart:
It has really pushed that line to a different place. I would say that is true of each time I have moved him to a different line. This is our fourth-line center from last year, but he has played left wing with Barkov, he has played left wing with Bennett, and now with Lundell.
Wherever we have put him, we have loved the line. The battle to get the puck out at the end of the game on his side — he is so strong. He is young, too. He is still learning. He kills penalties for us. He does have hands. He can make plays.
There is a time in his career when he is going on the power play. For me, it is more about measuring minutes as to why he is not on it right now. He just makes the people around him better. He is one of those guys.
On Sheldon Keefe’s comment that Sam Bennett’s cross-check looked similar to the Auston Matthews cross-check that led to a suspension last season as well as the incident involving Bennett and Matthew Knies:
I didn’t see the outdoor game. I know that would shock you that we wouldn’t all be focused on the Leafs games. I probably had a prescout for those pesky Florida Panthers. I can’t comment on that. Everybody seemed to survive that.
The tangle-up behind the net… I think we have been on the other side of the ledger enough.
Sam Bennett should get supplemental discipline for this but he probably won’t pic.twitter.com/IKFxA8a9cD
— Michael (@mic_mazz) May 5, 2023
On the importance of the team’s forecheck and how it’s affected by the team’s energy level after five games in nine nights:
Two days is going to be good for us. We had a two-day block after Game 4 in the Boston series. We needed it.
The first four games of that Boston series were twice as physical as we have played here both ways. It was even in physicality. I think the hit number in Game 1 was 87.
Sometimes, you go to different buildings, and you look at those numbers… Do you know what I mean? It was as heavy of a first game as I’ve ever seen and straight through the first four. We needed those two days.
More than physical, it’s the emotional… Not even toll, but with what we had to spend to get to tonight in the last five games, we need that rest.
You know the counters that Toronto does, where Matthews or Marner picks it up and comes back through the neutral zone? It is not as easy to stop as you think. Our forecheck isn’t, either. It is what we are built to do.
We have these kinds of players. We are really good at this. They have those kinds of players. They are amazing at it. They are, I think, the best counter team in the league.
We each have our strengths. For a forechecking team, a little bit of rest helps. It is why we haven’t skated on our off days. We have a whole performance group of people. We hired a guy from Australia. We bring all of these guys in. We need to keep this team fresh if we can.
On his excitement to return to home ice after three straight games on the road:
It is great. We were talking about it this morning — the coaches were — at breakfast. It was the first time it felt like a road trip. The others didn’t. You are wired. You are all fired up. Today, it felt like a road trip.
We need that rest. We need the mental and physical rest. We’ll get back home in front of our fans, and then when you bang one off the bar, you get the crowd to go nuts for you. We didn’t have a whole lot of that in here tonight and didn’t expect it.
It will be good for us.
