|
 |   |
|
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Multimedia Central Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities Work in Sports
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE |  |
One more shot Stars' Hitchcock talks about team's gutsy win
Posted: Friday June 09, 2000 10:32 PM
The Dallas Stars came away with a stunning, thrilling win in Game 5 to send the Stanley Cup Finals back to Texas after a1-0 victory over the New Jersey Devils Thursday Night in East Rutherford. CNNSI.com's Mark Morgan spoke with Stars' head coach Ken Hitchcock after the game. Mark Morgan: Describe to me the emotional ebb and flow as you watched from the bench as your team, allegedly old, allegedly slower than the Devils fight through and finally survive the game on (Mike) Modano's goal. Ken Hitchcock: Well, the ebb and flow got real slow at the end. But, I mean, this is familiar territory to us. We've been in these endurance tests. We were in it last year. The Buffalo series was terrific. We were in a big-time series against Edmonton. The series against Colorado was exactly the same. We've been in these long ones and our players are comfortable in it. It's up for grabs. We obviously know what we have to do. As an organization and as players and coaches, we just felt a real responsibility to at least bring the thing back to Dallas for our family, our friends and our fans. We just felt we needed to do that. And we needed to do it with 60 minutes and then some. But we needed to put 60 minutes in originally just so we felt good about ourselves. Morgan: It was obviously a total team effort, but what can you say about your goaltender, Ed Belfour? Has he played much better than that this entire season? Hitchcock: No, I think he's been outstanding. He's been the story of our team really since day one. But I thought the other guy has a big bite in the series too. (New Jersey goalie) Martin Brodeur played great in Game 4 and he was outstanding again in Game 5. And if we expect to win Game 6, we're going to have to find a way to solve him. Morgan: A lot of people may have counted this team out, down three games to one. Now you go back to Dallas. That's what you wanted. How big a lift does this win give your club? Hitchcock: Well, I don't know about lift. They're still carrying the hammer. We've just got to keep moving the nail around and hope they don't hit it. Right now, they missed the nail today. So hopefully they miss again and we can bring it back here (Monday for Game 7).
| ||||||||||||||||||||
