Mika Zibanejad (flu), Brendan Lemieux (flu), Marc Staal (maintenance) and Chris Kreider (lower body) did not skate during Sunday’s practice. (NYR)

David Quinn said on Sunday (NYR):

• On Chris Kreider, “day to day, obviously it felt like the right thing to hold him out today and he will be reassessed tomorrow.”
• It’s not anything serious, “no.”
• On the others that didn’t practice, “just day to day”
• How do you make shooting the puck more happen, “continue to harp on it, we haven’t played many games to highlight it but we will certainly highlight it to create more of a shooting mentality for our players. It’s something we have to get better at and you pass up one shot and that could turn into three more. You can’t look at it as one more shot because off of one shot, more times than not, come a few others. We just have to do a better job of creating that mentality.”
• On practicing 5 on 3s, “we practiced it, ironically, for 20 minutes on Friday. We do practice it. It’s something that can get overlooked during the season, we worked on it Friday.”
• Did you think the looks were there 5 on 3, “yea, we had a couple of great chances, a couple of others we could have taken advantage of and we just didn’t do it. He made some big saves too.”
• Are there lineup changes you might consider, “yes, without question. Over the course of the game last night I was contemplating changes to a lot of things. You’ve played two games and it’s a 1-1 game, I thought our forward group in general had a tough night, overall I thought our defense was pretty good. It was our forwards that caused a lot of our problems last night.”
• Will you make changes for Thursday, “to be determined.”
• Do you have a theory on it, “the start…in the first period we had 10 scoring changes and they had four and then you flip it to the third period, they had 10 and we had 4. Frustrating.”
• Is it because the team hasn’t played much, “I don’t want to go there. We all have talked about the schedule and how unique it is and we’d like to play more games but it’s not a reason why we can’t finish a game.”
• Is it hard to stay patient with this schedule, “yes and that goes…we are into game three last night. From the d-pairs to the lines, I didn’t want to have three different sets of d-pairings after three games so we kept the d-pairs together and then, let’s give these lines a chance. I know our scoring hasn’t been great but lets give it a chance. It’s a funny game that way because there are so many x-factors in that game because of the situation.”
• Did anyone have good games, “I thought Smitty had a pretty good night, Lias had some good moments. There are guys who had good moments but overall, as a whole, our forward group wasn’t as sharp as they are capable of being.”
• On Brady Skjei, “I thought Brady had his best night yesterday after two tough nights as he has certainly alluded to when we’ve talked to him. He’s been frustrated with himself and he did a good job getting back on the right track.”
• Has he been better with Fox, “It’s two games with Fox so it’s hard to tell, I think it’s more Brady getting dialed in and being the player he is capable of being.”
• On Kakko’s goal, “there was pressure put on himself for sure, felt it in the building when he scored, the reaction was incredible, felt so good for him and without question when you have all the attention and focus on you and you are as highly thought of as he is, he feels it, no mater what language he is in. It’s hard not to put extra pressure on yourself, very relieved he got that one out of the way.”
• On Lias Andersson, “you play three games and I’m not worried about minutes, over the course of the season…we are going to get back into stretches where we will have to manage minutes for everyone. We are going back to back Thursday and Friday and everybody’s minutes will go up that haven’t been playing a lot of minutes because we can’t play those top guys that many minutes over the course of the season, it’s not practical and they suffer from it over the long haul.”

The Rangers are off on Monday.