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Jack McCaffery is the lead sports columnist for the Daily Times and delcotimes.com. He has spent several decades covering everything from the Phillies, Eagles, Flyers and Sixers, to college hoops, to high school sports in Delco.

Friday, April 25, 2014

Berube: No line changes


Craig Berube met with the press shortly before Game 4 of the Flyers-Rangers series Friday.

This was the conversation:


Any plans for Scott Laughton?

“Not right now. He’ll be practicing with the extra guys and stuff like that.”

How about later in the playoffs?

“We’ll see. We’ll see. Can’t think that far ahead right now.”

Comparing and contrasting, what does Steve Mason bring to the table that Ray Emery might not?

“I don’t know. He’s been our guy all year and stuff. He handles the puck pretty good. He can make plays with that puck and get it out of our end quickly, which is good. It saves time in our end. Both goalies have played great all year for us, but Mase has been our guy and he is ready to go.”

In your experience, can you pinpoint a time when a goalie entered and came to the rescue in a playoff series?

“Well, Kenny Wregget came in in Game 7 in Pittsburgh in 1989.  He had a big game. Played well.”

Can a change of pace itself help with a different goalie?

“Yeah, I mean, looking back at Game 3, we had a lot of good things in that game, and I think we’ve just got to build off of it. And I think we have to execute better. If we do that, we’ll be fine.”

How important is scoring first?

“Well, we scored first in Game 1 and lost. They scored first in Game 2 and we won. It does matter, though, obviously. You don’t want to get down, 2-0, in a game. We’ve done that two games in a row. So for sure, we’ve got to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Is it too early to start talking to the players about taking it shift-by-shift, period-by-period?

“Well, I think we do anyhow. I don’t believe you should look far ahead. You go out there tonight, and everybody, on their first shift, that’s what they should be thinking about --- doing things right, doing things fast and getting some momentum.”

Any thoughts of line changes?

“I’ve stayed with the same thing. I don’t know about switching guys up. I mean, I think I’ll see how the game goes here, and if I have to make some adjustments in-game, I will.”

Is Mason’s stick-handling something you need, with the way he can make the outlet pass?

“Like I said, he fires it up pretty quick and he rips it around that board and stuff, so I think that gets us in an attack mentality, sort of, and maybe we can get a couple bounces and get some odd-man rushes off that, too.”

Is that the way a goalie helps? Emery gets 1.9 goals a game of help, Mason 3.03 --- that is a big difference.

“That stat is a little bit … I don’t know. There’s goalies throughout the league that don’t get much. Like (Cory) Schneider in Jersey this year got very little goal support. His numbers were good, but his wins and losses weren’t because of it. So who knows why that happens? I don’t believe that has anything to do with so much the goalies. It’s just how it goes.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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