There's still four or five guys trying to get into the lineup opening night for the playoffs. |
They outplayed us pretty significantly. |
This gives Minnesota a chance to get back in the race. Overall it was as poor a game as we have played in a while. |
This is the first time we've been involved in an elimination game when it hasn't been us on the eliminating side of things. I haven't seen one of those games in the six years I've been here. We relish the opportunity. |
This just compounds what's going to be a tremendously pressure-filled situation from now until the end. |
This was a big step for us. |
This was certainly not one of our better efforts. We relied on being in pretty good position defensively and we got excellent goaltending. |
Those games start off intense and then because of the route the game goes it goes from the sublime to the ridiculous. |
Tough team to protect a lead against. |
Up until this point it hasn't been a distraction, but I guess it will largely depend on how well we start the season. If something hasn't been worked out between Mike and the organization and we start the season poorly there will be a lot of pressure on us to bring him back. We're looking to have a good year with or without Mike. |
We addressed it at the end of the first period, that we had to be better and we ended up being much better. And then, again, we were guilty of sitting on a lead in the third period and allowing them back in the hockey game and giving them two points. |
We all knew how important it was for us. There's so much parity between the two teams that any emotional edge is a considerable advantage and a lot of times the deciding factor. They played hard, too, but we knew we needed to win and we did as good a job as we've done all year long in the third period defending the lead. |
We already have to have that record. |
We couldn't regroup in the second period. We were very fortunate to be down by two. |
We did a better job of managing our aggressiveness. |