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Valley: We often talk about goaltending being a process. How has the process evolved for you? Why has age made you better? Elliott: “I don’t know, that’s a good question. Obviously time and practicing your craft and learning what works for you and what doesn’t work is a big part of it. I think it’s so mental that you have to learn how to manage that pressure. I think that’s what goaltending is -- managing pressure. There are a lot of guys that are better athletes that played for however long, but they couldn’t get past that mental block of handling pressure. Obviously it takes a lot of luck to get to where you are, but you have an opportunity, and you have to manage those opportunities. The guys that can do this successfully early on in their career, they just get better at it over time. I just think the life lessons you learn as you get older probably help as well. Going through every situation, I think you just get a little more patient with the process, and a little more calm in the net. You look at every elite goalie right now, they’re all calm but athletic, and they come up big in the big games.” Valley: If we look at your career as a whole, during your second year in Ottawa, expectations changed a little bit and you got thrown into the starting role when Pascal Leclaire gets hurt. Let’s talk about some of the tougher times you’ve gone through, whether it was during that stretch in Ottawa, or your short stint in Colorado, or wherever you felt it. What was it, and what did you do to mentally get through it? Elliott: “My first season in Ottawa, I won 16 of my 32 games, so I felt pretty good. I came up from Binghamton because it was an emergency situation for them, so I came in and just tried to play my game. Obviously I wasn’t thinking about it too much, I just went out there and played and we won a lot of games. I think it really helps when you’re not thinking about what’s at stake. Sometimes that’s why rookies have such good seasons and then they have the sophomore slump, because they have lofty expectations and they put it on themselves when they don’t need to. My next year, I played 55 games and had 29 wins and played pretty good overall. The third season was the troublesome one, one where we had expectations of being a really good team. But everybody was gripping their sticks tight and trying too hard, and I got in that rut as well. With the Canadian media, if you struggle just a little bit, people start questioning you. When you’re young, it’s hard to really let that go because they’re asking you questions that you really don’t want to hear. You’re trying your best to put those thoughts out of your mind, but they’re putting them right back into your mind. So I think I struggled with that -- with handling the media and handling that situation every day. I didn’t even want to talk to the media after practices, because I knew they would ask questions that would put bad thoughts in my mind. I think as you get older, you learn how to manage that and you can answer them as politely and as politically correct as you can, and then move on with your day. We struggled all season long and I tried to do my best, then got traded to Colorado and they were struggling more than we were in Ottawa, so going into that situation didn’t really help my game at all either. I put even more pressure on myself down there because it was another opportunity, and if you don’t do something with that, you may never see the NHL again. I probably could have handled it better, but it just wasn’t a good situation.” Valley: Let me ask you this then. Is there such a thing as trying too hard? What are your thoughts on that? Elliott: “I know for sure that I can try too hard. You want to do the best that you can for yourself and your team and the organization and the coaches. But it’s just like your golf swing. You swing too hard and you’re not going to hit the ball. Goaltending is the exact same way. You have to let the game come to you, and that’s what you learn through experience. You can’t go in there wanting the puck all the time, because NHL shooters are too good, and they know if you’re in that kind of mindset. They can just throw in a subtle fake and pass it across and you’re screwed. It’s hard to find that balance. Then there are other times when you’re feeling it, and you know that you’re feeling it. You don’t put any thoughts in your mind, you just have that flow. It’s so hard to keep that going, however. But I think game in and game out, that’s why the greats are so great, because they can do that -- they can keep that flow for long periods of time. I tried to do that last season and I was pretty successful at performing consistently every night. It’s just about finding that routine that puts you in the right frame of mind, so that you go out there and stop everything. You enjoy that moment, you don’t run away from any of that pressure, and you’re not playing scared.” Valley: Let’s talk about your game. Take me through your mental approach on game day. I know when you’re younger it’s like your laser focused all day. But what approach have you found that works best for you leading up to a game? Elliott: “Leading up to the game, I’m a little bit looser now in pre-game skates, whereas before, I would basically treat it like a game. I think that helps you a little bit because I need to feel like it’s a real game in pre-game skates to put my mind at ease for the rest of the day. So once I hit that ice, I’m ‘on’ and not still trying to find my game. During the pre-game or morning skate, I warm up and do a lot of stuff that I do for an actual game, and I try to get into that mindset. I do that for basically every practice, so it doesn’t really change that much for me. I tried to just be as prepared as I can, take as many shots as I need to, get that good feeling going, and make sure the last couple of shots are saves. I think last year was good for me too because I had my wife and dog to come home to. So I think when you come home to that, it puts your mind at ease a little bit because you have to take the dog out and give him a walk before your nap, and you really forget about all of the pressures when you have something like that. It just helped me to relax. That definitely made me a little more comfortable on a day-to-day basis. Then I’m just really focused in the game, and I think I found a pretty good mix of being focused and having fun. I used to do my own warm-up by myself and never talk to anybody, and I would be over-focused and I would psyche myself out a little bit. This past year I played soccer with the boys and had some laughs and kept loose, then put my gear on and then roll through the same routine since college. I’ve tried to smile a little bit by listening to music or listening to the fans and get that good feeling that you’re going to go out there and going to win.” Valley: You mentioned something important, which is routine. Routine is experience, something you develop over time, and something that has been tested. You know if you go through it before each game, you know you’re ready to go and you’re on autopilot, so that’s a really good point. So if you’re out there playing and you’re focused and something bad happens or you get scored on, how do you mentally reboot? What do you do to get past that goal as quick as you can? Elliott: “I don’t know how long I’ve been doing it, but the past year I put a focus on it. I’ve always done this same thing; turn around, take a drink of water, tap the pads and the post and have that mental talk that you have with yourself. This past year, I’ve put an onus on one thing -- treating a goal against and a goal for the same way. Whatever happens on their end or on our end, I am rebooting mentally to basically a 0-0 game. I did have a good year, so I didn’t have too many goals to reboot from every game, so I do it with our goals for as well. I turn around, same squirts of the water bottle, and I think about it real quick, but I wouldn’t have a conversation in my head. I don’t get mad and my facial expression doesn’t change at all. I think that has a lot to do with it because if your team sees your body language change at all, I think that sends a bad message, so I just have the same body language with a goal-for or a goal-against. When I look up for the faceoff, I don’t even remember what happened. Everything is in front of me, nothing is behind me, and I just want to be prepared for that next shot. That gets me in the aggressive and patient mindset that you aren’t afraid of the next shot.”