ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) -Ducks coach Randy Carlyle keeps his nose out of Anaheim’s dressing room, preferring to let the players have their own space.
“They earned that opportunity, and that’s one of the things I didn’t want as a player,” Carlyle said Tuesday. “I didn’t want our coach always in the dressing room because it’s the players’ area. I go in, deliver whatever I have to do, and come out.”
Ducks goalie Jean-Sebastien Giguere likes it that way.
“Some coaches like to control the room as well as everything else,” he said. “We’re pretty much being told what to do, whether it’s on the ice or at the hotel or stuff like that. But the room is ours. We have enough leadership in this dressing room that we don’t need to have the coach overseeing it.”
Ottawa’s dressing room was a place to goof off after Tuesday’s off-day practice. Players peeled black tape off their uniforms, shaped it into balls and sent it flying toward the garbage can, usually missing. Sometimes it flew across the room.
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OH, CANADA-HEIM: The Ottawa Senators have taken on the mantle of Canada’s team in the Stanley Cup finals, with an asterisk.
Ottawa coach Bryan Murray, formerly a coach and GM for Anaheim, said a lot goes along with representing Canada, which hasn’t had a Stanley Cup champion since Montreal in 1993.
“There’s such an interest and a fascination and emotional attachment to hockey in Canada that when you are representing the country, it’s remiss not to think that everybody gets or most everybody gets caught up into it,” Murray said.
“That’s a great thing. I remember when other Canadian teams like the Montreal Canadiens won the Cup, whether we were Montreal fans or not, we’re attached to that fact.”
The asterisk? Anaheim had more Canadians – 20 listed on the Game 1 roster to the Senators’ 14.
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SHOW ME: Cuba Gooding Jr., who won a best supporting Oscar for his role as a money-hungry football player in “Jerry Maguire,” is a huge hockey fan, pals with the Ducks’ Teemu Selanne, and was at the Ducks’ 3-2 victory over Ottawa on Monday.
Zdenek Matejovsky was wrapping up an interview of Gooding for Finnish TV about his chat with Selanne following the game when Matejovsky asked, “Will you please …?”
He didn’t need to finish the question because Gooding struck a pose and said, “SHOW ME THE CUP!” – a variation on his famous movie line.
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TOCCHET’S STATUS: NHL commissioner Gary Bettman will wait until the league completes its investigation into Rick Tocchet’s plea to gambling charges before deciding whether he can return to work.
“I’m not really in a position to say what’s going to happen,” Bettman said while in Anaheim for the beginning of the Stanley Cup finals.
Phoenix Coyotes coach Wayne Gretzky has said he wants Tocchet back as an assistant after more than a year on leave.
Tocchet pleaded guilty last week to promoting gambling and conspiracy to promote gambling in a plea deal that may spare him jail time.
Bettman said he’ll decide Tocchet’s status after the coach is sentenced this summer and after the league’s independent investigator has interviewed Tocchet and completed his report.
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HALL OF FAME AWARDS: Dave Fay, who covers the Washington Capitals, and the late Bill Hewitt, voice of “Hockey Night in Canada” for more than 30 years, will be honored by the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto.
Fay will receive the Elmer Ferguson Memorial Award for writing about the Capitals for the Washington Times since the early 1980s.
“Dave Fay is one of the most beloved characters in our organization, a man known for his biting wit and humor,” said Kevin Allen, president of the Professional Hockey Writers Association.
Hewitt will receive the award named for his father, the Foster Hewitt Memorial Award, which honors outstanding contributions to the broadcast profession and the game of hockey. The younger Hewitt was the voice of the Toronto Maple Leafs until 1982. He died in 1996.
Fay and the Hewitt family will receive their awards on Nov. 12.
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