Eric Engels

And when Marty was asked yesterday if, you know, the regular season and what happened between the teams is irrelevant, he said no, because they play a unique brand.

It's because if you go back through all the playoffs past, the big story about this team is can they play as hard as they do for 82 games a season and then be able to carry it all the way through to a Stanley Cup final and win?

They're very demanding style, five on five, man on man, all the way up the ice on every area of the ice.

So yeah, 12-day break brought some rust.

But it also gave them rest they have never had at this juncture of the season where they have always failed.

And so, I don't know, like, I think you just got to give the Canadians credit.

They had a phenomenal game plan, and they executed it to near perfection.

Yeah, you know what?

You definitely see... We've been talking a lot about how this is the youngest team in the playoffs and the youngest team in the league for a long time.

I know Phil Deneau came in halfway through, up the age limit a little bit, but the entire core is between 20 and 26 years old, and it's almost full, right?

The other thing we've been talking about is how mature they are and how they kind of defy their age, and that was a sign of it.

You know, they had...

between Monday night and Thursday night to prepare for the series.

Not the coaches, not Alex Burrows, not Adam Nicholas and Roger Grillo, a lot of the pre-sky.

I know Marty mentioned Burrows specifically, but those guys were also involved.

Those guys had time, but to transmit the message to their team, they could only focus on a couple of key points, really.

If you think of those 72 hours, you got at least 21 of them spent on sleep, pretty much, for the players.

Three meetings happened, as Suzuki said.

There was one Wednesday, one Thursday morning, one Thursday before the game.

The focus, naturally, would be on how to break the first wave of pressure that the Hurricanes break.