Look, if you gave me a list of things I would want to hear from the losing head coach following a complete beatdown that brought a team of underdogs to the bitter brink of elimination and asked me to rank them then "they are better than us" would be sitting there more lonely than the fat kid during recess. As far as postgame quotes given to fulfill repetitive media obligations are concerned, "we aren't as good as our opponent" is admittedly far more controversial than it needed to be. That said, I just can't find a reason to look at it as a preemptive excuse when the one reason the Ottawa Senators have made it this far in the postseason is because the entirety of their roster has bought into a strategy that's built around them tactically outperforming their talent. This isn't like Gordon Bombay sarcastically ripping his team of misfits behind their back. This is an NHL coach saying something that was - at the very least - implied when he got his professional athletes to embrace and execute a defensive-minded system aimed at keeping games close. Maybe hearing their head coach talk about how inferior they are will serve as a reminder of what helped them to overcome that inferiority in previous rounds, or maybe it breeds resentment amongst a group of proud players. Whatever the case may be, it can't make things much worse than losing by so many goals that your rotation of goaltenders turned into a goddamn carousel. I don't know if I would have dropped that truth bomb if I were Guy Boucher, but there's very little chance it blows up in his face with what's at stake for a team that is merely six wins away from realizing it's dream while being no strangers to adversity. Considering how far they have come, I think it's safe to say that he has a better grasp of his room than those that just walk into it to pry answers that aren't nearly as incriminating as they seem on the surface.
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