After Friday’s practice, head coach Craig Berube discussed his team’s process that led to a 3-0 series lead, the difficulty of eliminating an opponent in the playoffs, Max Pacioretty’s series debut, and the play of his top line.

How do you build on the success of the first three games as a team?

 

Berube: Continue to do a lot of the things we are doing. There are always things to clean up and do better, but we are doing a lot of good stuff. It is about continuing to focus on that; focus on the process, and go shift-to-shift tomorrow.

How concerned are you about pucks getting fired from the other side of the ice in warmup?

Berube: I don’t think it is anything. They played together last year. I don’t even know who did it or a lot about it, to be honest with you. The league will handle that.

Regardless of the warmup antics, the Senators are clearly trying to unsettle Anthony Stolarz. What have you made of his ability to handle it?

Berube: He has been around. He is a veteran guy who has been around a long time. He is focused on his job and what he needs to do. I get it. They are trying to get to the net; that is normal in every playoff series. They are going to go to the net hard and dig in there. He just has to stay focused on his job and not get too wrapped up in it.

How much do you talk to him about that, given that, in your previous job, you had a goalie who could be combustible at times?

Berube: Oh yeah. I haven’t really talked to Stoly about that too much — they are different people — but the other guy got involved a little bit. He liked that action.

What have you learned over the years about how difficult it is to close out a series against a team on the brink of elimination?

Berube: It is hard. We will get the hardest game tomorrow. That has always been the way. We have to focus on the process going into the game, what we need to do shift-to-shift, and stay patient with our game. We have to be more disciplined in the game. I’ll say that right now; we took too many penalties in the last game.

What did you think of Max Pacioretty’s first game of the series?

Berube: I thought he was excellent. I loved his physicality. He skated well. He made some nice plays. That line had a couple of opportunities. I thought he was really good for us.

Is killer instinct something a team innately has or can learn on the fly?

Berube: You can learn and apply it. Most athletes or veteran athletes have it. They understand. All you can do is understand what you need to do every shift as a player, the battling and competitiveness that we need, and the smart puck play. That is the type of process that you need to focus on.

The killer instinct will take care of itself if you do things right, but it is going to boil down to competitiveness and battles. It really is. That team battles over there. They are competitive. They have a lot of good players.

We have to focus on competing, the battle, and the structure. We need to understand our process throughout the game.

What do you feel like the team has unlocked in the last 15-20 games when everything seems to be coming together?

Berube: I think we have been really good at composure and discipline. We have been really good at that down the stretch. The game may not be going your way all the time, and you may not think you have the puck enough — there are a lot of things that play into it — but we stay patient and keep doing our job defensively. We stay with it, and it finally comes around. You get your opportunities.

That has been a big part of our success down the stretch. We have to keep focusing on it. There are going to be breakdowns, but there are people to help with the extra effort needed, the second or third effort. I think we have a lot of that going on right now.

Was there any particular moment or game where you felt like the team found its extra gear down the stretch?

Berube: I don’t really have a particular game. I don’t know. I think we were hungry to win the division, and our guys pushed to win the division. That was a big part of it — some extra motivation to win the division. We played good hockey.

I don’t have one game in particular where things changed. I think we played pretty consistent hockey most of the year. There are always areas you want to improve and work on — we have done that — but I think we have been a pretty consistent team at home and on the road.

David Perron was saying that he sees a lot of similarities between the way the Leafs currently play and the way the 2019 Blues played. When you took this job, how much were you thinking of replicating what you did in St. Louis?

Berube: Different players. I don’t think we had the skill set that is here with some of the guys in St. Louis. The guys in St. Louis were probably more apt to dump it and go to forecheck. That is the type of players they were. The teams are similar with the big backend defenders.

It is not even like we dump the puck in all the time. Yeah, we put the puck in deep because you have to forecheck in this game and in the playoffs — it is highly important — but there is a mentality you have to build throughout the season to get to this level.

If you don’t do it during the regular season, it is hard to turn the switch on. I wanted to really get that identity across to our team right away. We want to play a north-style of game and try to establish that throughout the season, which I think we have. Our guys have bought into it.

It is all about the players buying into what you want to do. Our players have done a good job of buying in.

There are similarities in the style of play, for sure, to how we played in St. Louis.

What did you think of the Matthews line’s Game 3 and their first shift of the third period, in particular? 

Berube: They got a tough matchup. That Pinto line does a good job of checking them. It is hard to get them away from them. All three of those guys are good checkers who are hard to play against. That line stuck with it, and finally, they came through with a big goal.

That is the mindset you have to have. It might not happen for two periods or two and a half periods. You have to keep grinding and working. They did a good job of that. I liked their game all-around. They defended well, worked, and competed.

And then you have guys on the line who can make high-end plays. That was a high-end play.

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