Ducks' dressing room no place for Carlyle

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.