Ego? You need to have one during the playoffs

5/26/99

By Guy Carbonneau
for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram

I've said it all along that ego is a good thing in hockey, and that's something I firmly believe.

I went to Ken Hitchcock before Game 2 and told him I think it would help the team if I checked Peter Forsberg and let Mike Modano get the chance to play a little more offense. The move was bred in part out of ego and in part out of thinking that was the right thing for the team.

The ego part came in that I really thought I could do a good enough job on Forsberg and that my line would do a good enough job on Forsberg, Claude Lemieux and Valeri Kamensky that we wouldn't hurt the team. That's part of believing in yourself, believing you're better than the other person on the ice, believing that no matter what situation you get placed in, you'll come out on top.

Some people would call that cocky, I guess, but I don't care. I mean, in athletics, you have to be cocky, you have to have an ego to survive. That's one thing I've learned over all these years.

I have to confess something, though: This isn't the first time I've done this. In the 1993 Stanley Cup finals when I was playing for the Montreal Canadiens against the Los Angeles Kings, we did almost the exact same thing. Coach Jacques Demers decided that he wanted to put offense against offense, believing that our top centers could win a two-way battle with Wayne Gretzky.

I told Jacques that I thought I could shut down Gretzky, and that would allow our offensive centers to think about offense and not have to worry about checking Gretzky. Jacques did it, and it worked.

I guess that's the kind of thing that helps build your ego.

You know, though, what we were able to do worked for one game, and there's no telling whether it's going to work again. We don't even know if we'll be able to get that matchup in Colorado, since Avalanche coach Bob Hartley has the second change and will be better able to pick the matchups.

But for the one game, it did work, and that helps build ego -- either mine or Mike Modano's or the entire team's.

The thing is that even if it didn't work, I couldn't let that bother me. When you're on the ice, you have to believe you're better than the other player, you have to believe you'll get nastier and dirtier and meaner if you have to. Because that's what it takes to win in this game, and you can't back away from it.

You have to believe in yourself to win; that's just a fact of the hockey playoffs.

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