Q&A with Dan Cloutier
CNNSI.COM
Dan Cloutier went 11-1 in November, leading the Canucks on a franchise-best 10-game win streak in the process. He has a 15-6-3 record, with a 2.27 goals-against average and a .915 save percentage this season. Since coming to Vancouver in a trade from Tampa Bay in 2001, Cloutier is 50-34-13, quite an improvement from his 22-56-10 career mark prior to that. Cloutier spoke with CNNSI.com's Jon A. Dolezar about winning the NHL Player of the Month award for November and being a part of a Stanley Cup contender.
CNNSI.com: Have you ever been a part of a win streak like that?
Cloutier: No, never at any level. It was unbeliveable. It made the month go by a lot faster, that's for sure.
CNNSI.com: How impressed have you been with your play this season?
Cloutier: I think the team is playing extremely well in front of me, too. And I'm obviously happy with the way things have gone overall. I am pleased, but it's a long season and we are only 20 games in. So it's a long ways from being over.
CNNSI.com: How much of an honor was it to be named NHL Player of the Month?
Cloutier: It was big, just because I never even thought about it. It never crossed my mind and then I walked on the plane and coach Crawford let me know that I was named player of the month. It was exciting.
But when a team scores as many goals as we do, it reflects on how well the team has played in front of me. They are scoring pretty well right now. It's like we were playing last year in the second half of the season, too. We were getting support from all the other lines.
The same thing on this road trip. It seems like we took a little bit of the pressure off our big line so that we spread out the scoring. Whenever you score four or five goals a game in this league, you usually are going to get a win.
CNNSI.com: Are you guys too reliant on your top line for scoring?
Cloutier: We realize that we do need to spread it out a little more because they are a well-known line now, and they are going to have to face the top defense pairings on every other team. So for them it's going to get a little tougher.
But we have four good lines that come to play every night, so I think we are going to be all right with what we've got.
CNNSI.com: Why are you guys so successful on the road?
Cloutier: I just think it's because we keep it simple. We don't try to do too much. At home at the start of the year, we didn't get off to a great start. Maybe it's because we were trying to do too much. And we finished strong last year, so maybe we thought it was going to be easier. I don't know why, but on the road we just keep it simple. And it's been paying off for us.
CNNSI.com: What did Brian Burke say last Christmas to key the second-half turnaround?
Cloutier: He just said that he was going to keep this team together and it was up to us to turn it around. There were a lot of trade rumors at the time, so coming from your general manager when he tells you that no one is going anywhere and he is keeping the same team, for a lot of guys that took a lot of pressure off. It just sent a message that we were going to keep the same core of guys and go for it. It made us feel more comfortable, I guess.
CNNSI.com: How happy are you in Vancouver with how things have transpired the past couple of seasons?
Cloutier: It's been great ever since I've been here. I really enjoy the city. Even when I first got here, the players were great. We have a great bunch of guys, and even a young team here. So it's worked out good.
CNNSI.com: How did you turn it around personally after struggling on some pretty bad teams?
Cloutier: Coming here has definitely boosted my confidence. Playing in Tampa, we were rebuilding and had a lot of young players. At the time I was traded, I think Vancouver was sixth in the conference and in playoff contention. At Christmas time, we were out of it with Tampa. So coming here in February to a playoff race, and playing in Canada, it was definitely exciting.
CNNSI.com: How much of your game is about confidence?
Cloutier: All goalies will tell you that the mental aspect of the game is so big for them. If you put a couple of wins together in a row, after that it just seems like you aren't thinking out there, you are just getting things done. And it's a fine line between winning and losing, too.
But one of the things that I've learned from playing on rebuilding teams is not to let that affect you. And I think that's helped me out here, because I don't let things bother me, if I have a great game or a bad game.
CNNSI.com: Are you ready to handle the heavy workload?
Cloutier: Yeah, I think so. Last year I played 62 games and I missed five weeks with an ankle injury. So last year I was on pace to play a lot of games, too. If it comes this year, I'm happy.
The more you play, the more experience you get, the better you get. I think I'm better when I play a lot and am in there every night.
Especially with the way the schedule is this year; we always seem to be playing every second night, so you always feel fresh. When things are going well, you want to be out there as many times as you can. Even when things are going bad, you just want to get out there and get it going again. So it's nice to get an opportunity to play.
CNNSI.com: Have you put the Lidstrom shot behind you?
Cloutier: To be honest with you, it didn't stick with me. People will say it did, but I have forgotten about it. I've had a lot of bad goals in my career and I've never let them affect me. But obviously what happened after that one, it's pretty easy to say it did stay with me, but to me it didn't.
People thought it was going to haunt me at the start of the season, too. If you ask any goalie, everyone has allowed bad goals and you just have to move on. Ever since I was 5 years old I've been dealing with that, so I'm kind of used to it.
Playing in Canada there's a lot of media and they brought it up all summer and during training camp. Finally, in training camp, I just decided to tell them that I'd talk about it one more time and that's it -- time to move on.
CNNSI.com: What is it with great young goaltenders coming out of Quebec?
Cloutier: I think it's great. We all seem like we are around the same age. And the big reason for it is that if you asked most of them, we are all big Patrick Roy fans from growing up. So I think we all grew up watching the Montreal Canadiens. The Quebec Major Junior Hockey League -- even though I didn't play there -- does a great job with young goalies.
CNNSI.com: How much did you base your style on how Roy played?
Cloutier: I would love to have his style. I think he's a great goalie and I'm not quite as good as he is technically. Obviously, growing up I tried to be like him. I've just always liked the way he competed. He's just a winner, and those guys are hard to find.
CNNSI.com: Do you enjoy watching some of your contemporaries who are from Quebec as well?
Cloutier: Yeah, I do. I've been with these guys growing up, through juniors, at the draft and at the world juniors tryouts. So it's nice to see them having good NHL seasons, too. And a guy like Jose Theodore, who was in the world junior camp with me, wins the Vezina Trophy last year, so it's nice to see the young guys finally doing well.
CNNSI.com: Which of them did you grow up with or play against growing up?
Cloutier: I was born in Quebec, but I grew up in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, so I didn't really play against too many. I just saw them all the time at all-star games or at the world juniors tryouts. At one of my tryouts, I had Jocelyn Thiabult, Eric Fichaud and Marc Denis.
I grew up playing against Jamie Storr, and I grew up playing on the same bantam team as Marty Turco. We had a really good team. It was fun and it's fun to see him doing great. It's pretty rare that you'd have two goalies from the same team make it to the NHL, so that's pretty nice. We stay in touch and see each other when I go back to Soo in the summers. I played with Steve Sullivan, Aaron Gavey and Kevin Hodson with the Greyhounds, and Ted Nolan was our coach. We had a great bunch of guys there, and we won the Memorial Cup in 1993.
CNNSI.com: How do you describe Marc Crawford's coaching style?
Cloutier: I think we have a great system for the type of team we have. We are a fast team, so he has just one guy stay high all the time. Our third guy always seems to stay high and that gives our defensemen chances to pinch. And with the type of players we have, I think it's the perfect system.
We have a great defense, and everyone knows we can score goals, too. We were first in the league last year, so the only thing we could work on maybe is to play a little bit more defensive, because we do know that we can score. But right now, things are going well the way we've been playing, so I don't see why we should change it.
CNNSI.com: How much do you remember about the 1996 Avalanche team?
Cloutier: I watched them in the finals. They had a great mix of guys there. They had very good defensive defensemen like Adam Foote, and Patrick Roy was on top of his game. Obviously they had the Sakics and the Forsbergs, but then they had the Mike Keanes and those types of role players, too. So they had a great mix.
CNNSI.com: Can you guys compare to them in any way? Especially with Naslund being comparable to Forsberg and maybe with Bertuzzi being your Deadmarsh or Lemieux, a guy who can score and rough it up a little bit.
Cloutier: I think there are some similarities. Yeah, we are pretty close, but it's still really early in our season to be compared to anything right now. We want to be our own team, I guess.
CNNSI.com: Is this team built for the playoffs?
Cloutier: That's our goal, but we are just 20 games into the season and it's such a fine line between winning and losing. So I don't want to talk about that too much.
CNNSI.com: Did you guys get excited during your win streak and realize that you have the talent to go further than last year's team?
Cloutier: Our goal is to get further than we did last year. During that winning streak, it was funny, we didn't really think about it. We were on the road, too, which makes it a little easier, because there is less media around the team. And you are only in one city for one night, where you play and then you leave to a different city. So we didn't really have time to think about it, which was a good thing, I think, for our team. That was probably one of the big reasons we were successful on the road like that.
CNNSI.com: What can you guys do to recapture the magic of the win streak?
Cloutier: We've been doing a lot of great things during the whole month of November. If you look back, we had a great month. We had scoring from all of our different lines and we played well defensively. We are just going to have to do the same thing. It was a great time for us.
We lost on Long Island, but came back with a big win in New Jersey while playing back to back games. That's pretty tough to do in this league, so that was a really positive sign for us, so hopefully we can get another winning streak going.