Obviously, it's going to get tougher, I think, in the second half because of the schedule and the Olympics. So, I think, right now, we're making the most of a good schedule for our team. I think we have only four road games in this month, and then December is tougher for us. But definitely after the Olympic break, we have a tougher schedule. But the way we're going now, I don't think we should slow down and we just have to keep pushing ourselves every night and keep trying to improve to be better. |
Once we got the lead a few minutes into the third we were too hesitant. We played too patient and kind of stopped skating and we couldn't get it going after. I think it's not what they did, it's more what we did — or didn't do. |
Once we killed off my penalties, that gave us a lot of momentum. It's something I shouldn't have done, but I had such good position on St. Louis, there's no way I touched him. Maybe it's not the referee's fault, (St. Louis) dives and fools the referee. We were getting a lot of penalties and I just lost it. |
Our special teams tonight were the difference. Five-on-five, I think we were the better team. It's a tough loss. |
Pressure's good. If you really want to push yourself and push your team to see what you can accomplish, sometimes you have to put a little pressure on yourself. We know we've got to come together a little bit and [this was] a good challenge for us. |
Ray's been playing great for us and we have a lot of confidence in him. |
Right now, I think we're playing a team that's struggling and lacking confidence big time, and missing some guys. With the start we got it kind of made them feel like it was going to be a long night and we made sure we didn't let up on anything. We did a great job all night. |
Right now, we've got a lot of confidence and we're finding each other on the ice. |
Some games will have more chances, more goals. It's as long as we get the W (that matters). |
Some things are more important than hockey. |
Sometimes offense is the best defense. Like I said, I think we're playing with the puck a lot more, and I think because we're scoring so many goals, I think teams are respecting us and they don't dare to go on the offense as much as maybe they did before because they know we are going to make them pay if they make a mistake. |
Ted wanted this vote to make sure everybody was on board. He had the support of the players on the conference call (Monday), but he thought we should have the vote so that everybody feels comfortable with him. |
That turned the game definitely in our favor. When we got a 4-minute penalty after that, I think we controlled the game pretty good. |
That was a crazy play, |
That's our goal, no question. We prepare every season like that. We know it's going to be hard. There's a lot of good teams out there, but our goal has been, from the beginning, to be there challenging for the Stanley Cup. |