One man's loss is another man's opportunity, I guess. We have some extra forwards around here. We'll see what they have. He wants to play in Europe and there's no sense whining about it. We'll go with what we have and do what we have to do. |
Our effort wasn't too bad but we didn't work smart at all. We didn't give up a lot of quality chances, but the ones we did, they were able to capitalize on them. The mistakes we made were just fundamental mistakes and you can't have that. |
Our penalty kill in the last month in general has been really good. That's an area, a reason why our goals against has been really down because of the improvements in our penalty killers and the goaltending hand-and-hand, everybody is getting more on the same page as far as responsibility. |
Our thinking part is really the area (that needs work). The simplistic nature that we need to dictate and play with was lacking. I thought we looked frustrated and we ran ourselves out of position many times and we did a poor job of concentrating. |
Rockford will be the prohibitive favorite, and they should be. They've had an excellent season. We're flying under the radar, and we'll play our game. |
Sooner or later it just happens, so we try to prepare for it as much as we can. |
The emphasis for us is to keep playing well and keep getting wins. Let's take care of business day-to-day. |
The first half of the game he played really well and gave us a chance, and we didn't give him any support. |
The last two games we haven't played with intensity or smart intensity. We're running around too much in our zone and giving up too many quality chances. |
The one thing we've been able to do is get a few extra bodies here, and that has helped. If a player is fatigued or something, you're able to spread around the ice time a little bit. It's also helped with the busy schedule we've had. |
The opponent, at any time, and especially at this time of the year, is kind of irrelevant in that regard. There are some things you're going to look to counter against with certain teams, but it's mostly about taking care of your own business. |
There's a few familiar faces, but just the fact that we've played them 10 times this year means we are familiar with them and they are familiar with us. We've had good games with them and look forward to playing them. |
This was as good as we've competed in awhile. It was a good bounce-back game from Wednesday. It was a good effort. It was a matter of playing better hockey. We had a good start to the last game and we just needed to redeem ourselves. … We have to be a hard-working team and extremely diligent in our efforts. I thought we did a lot of the little things tonight pretty well. |
Those (penalties) need to get fewer, you're right. |
Typically, if your veteran players are doing it, everyone else will, too. It's just a matter of the more you do it, the more that's where you feel you need to be. It's an attitude. Some players don't think they are able to do that, and they suffer because of it. |