Murray: Hawks, Ducks will pull out the stops
ANAHEIM, Calif. - Troy Murray answers questions ahead of Game 7 of the Western Conference finals between the Blackhawks and the Ducks.
Q: How much different is a Game 7 compared to any other hockey game an NHL player plays in?
A: In this game, the reality of it is one team moves on, one team finishes. So there is a different pressure. ...
But there's no tomorrow. For the Ducks in Game 6, there was a tomorrow; for the Blackhawks there wasn't.
In this one, it's over. It's done. You know that unfortunately one of these two good teams is not going to be moving on. You could play this game 10 times and maybe have 10 different results.
There's pressure at both ends of it. But I don't know where the difference is. Once you start playing the game, you feel the same pressure as you would more normally. Maybe a little bit nerves, maybe a little bit more edge going into the preparation side.
Q: Do approach anything differently or coach any differently if you get behind?
A: Well, you pull out all stops. You've come to this point, you're going to shorten your bench, you're going to use the players that give you the best opportunity to win. As the game moves on, you're shortening your bench to have offensive players involved in the game.
There's a lot of involvement in the coaching side of it. They have to worry about a matchup that's on the ice. If they miss a beat or they don't catch something that's going on there, that could be the difference in the game.
Maybe it's no different than a player - every shift that's he out there, he's got to understand that that shift could be the shift that makes the difference in the game, for or against you.
The coaches have to make sure they're as mentally into the game as the players because of what they're going to decide as far as matchups; at what point do you make adjustments in lines if you're behind; when do you call your timeout. ... Both of these coaches will have defining moments in this game.
Q: Both teams lost Game 7s last year. What do they take away from those experiences?
A: Since they are both in the same position, there's anger (from last year) that both teams will feed off. ... For the Ducks the game was decided fairly early on, so the reality had already sunk in in the third period. For the Blackhawks, it ended abruptly on the overtime goal.
But I think both of these teams can use that feeling and say, 'We don't want to have that feeling again.' The Blackhawks players have talked about it leaving a bad taste in their mouth all summer long. I know that the Ducks were in that same situation.
That's the motivation for both of these teams - to have a different result from what happened last year.
• Murray is in his 15th year as a member of the Blackhawks broadcast team and his eighth as the color analyst for the team's radio broadcasts. The Selke Award winner was a five-time 20-goal scorer who played 15 years in the NHL. Follow him on Twitter@muzz19.