David Quinn announced that Jesper Fast will miss the rest of the season with the injury that has been keeping him out of the lineup. (NYR)
Fast has been battling through injury for most of the season and has not been practicing. (NYR)
David Quinn met with the media on Monday after practice and said (NYR):
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- On the lineup for tonight, “Georgie is in net, Staal is out – lower body injury, Freddy Claesson is in.”
- On Ryan Strome, “I think he has become a more complete player, he has always had the ability to produce offensively, he had a 50 pt season and he has had an opportunity and take advantage of it. He wants to get better and has done a lot of good things for us since he has been here.”
- On being able to win again, “Winning feels way better than losing, we have gone through a tough stretch and to play against a team of that caliber on a Saturday night and doing it the way we did it, we did a lot of good things. It was a real feel good win, not that all wins don’t feel good but some feel better than others and I would put that in that category.”
- On the shot attempts Toronto had, “I certainly don’t want to give up 104 shot attempts, that is not a recipe for success, we are aware of that, but when you are playing against a team with that fire power, with a shooting mentality, as we have talked about with us, we don’t have that shooting mentality and we are trying to get more shots off, some of our best chances we didn’t get a shot off, that is something we have to get better at but the fact that we were willing to block shots and compete the way we did and show the characteristics we did in Toronto – I thought we showed a lot of those against Detroit, so we have made some progress over the last two games.”
- On facing Pittsburgh, “similar challenge with the talent that they have. The recipe for success, we have to do a better job of doing the things we did well, we got into trouble after we scored our goal, they turned the heat up but we were running around and let the environment and situation get to us a little bit, that crowd can react to anything and even if nothing is going on, they will react to a shot that misses the net and all the sudden your team feeds off it and their team feeds off it and then real bad things happen. We won’t have that tonight in our own building.”
- Is Staal day to day, “he is day to day, much better but he wasn’t going to be able to play.”
- On Jesper Fast, “Fast is done for the year. He’s around, rehabbing, he won’t skate, but we will address his injury and he will be fine.”
- On Kreider, “day to day, getting better.”
- More on Fast, “he’s the ultimate pro, as coachable a human being and as a team-guy as you can have on your roster. He’s invaluable to us and can play in all situations, I always had heard great things but he far exceeded what I heard.”
- Was it difficult to tell him he was done for the year, “yes, he wants to be out there tonight.”
- On Georgiev playing more, “yes, there is a chance for that, see how he plays tonight. Hank has had a heck of a year for us overall, so I want to get him back in for sure but Georgie has played great.”