3:49PM: David Quinn spoke on Tuesday and said (NYR):

• Is Howden between Kreider and Kakko on Thurs, “that is something we are going to do.”
• Why make that change, “didn’t love what I saw in that line, I think the line balance might be better. Howds had a decent night the other night.”
• What have you liked about Howden, “of the three games we’ve played, I think he has gotten better throughout them, I liked what I saw in practice today, he’s playing with more pace and physicality.”
• On the opportunity for him, “I think it’s a great opportunity for him, everyone feels pressure at this level and he just has to keep doing the things he is capable of doing, being on the right side of people, play fast, go to the net, be responsible defensively.”
• Is Smith moving up, “yea, Smitty will be on that left wing.”
• On who will/won’t play on the fourth line, “that will be determined as we go through the week.”
• Will you split the goalies this week, “we will talk more about that in the next few days.”
• Why did you interrupt practice as much as you did, “I did it during the scrimmage because there are a lot of things we need to clean up from a details standpoint and I thought early on the practice was good and free flowing and once we got to the scrimmage, and obviously everybody has alluded to our schedule and the other thing is that when you are scrimmaging and you have four lines and you have guys going every other time you plan on stopping at a certain point but we have to clean things up, we can’t be that sloppy and our attention to detail has to get better and the only way you can do that is through a scrimmage and when you are scrimmaging with guys going every other shift you sense an opportunity to stop it. On top of giving them a rest you can teach.”
• On Chris Kreider, “I love what I’ve seen on the PP, I think he’s been a real important piece of that PP. He may not get the accolades but he does a heck of a job keeping pucks alive, done a real good job down low. I love his PP play, in general, I think the line he has been on hasn’t been great, it’s been inconsistent and one of the things I’d like to see not only from him but from all of our forwards is to have a mentality of pressuring pucks more, I don’t think we are pressuring pucks anywhere where we need to, I don’t think we are physical enough anywhere where we need to be. Everyone has a different level of physicality to them, I’m not expecting a guy that is 180 to be as physical as a guy who is 230 but you gotta get to people and we just didn’t go anybody the other night.”
• “I really believe that we are cheating the game, I think we got misled in our first two games. The first game was not a great one even though we won it and I thought we were better in Ottawa and I just thought, we were very lifeless against Edmonton – it was so long ago I forget who we played – but we just were. It’s been talked about and addressed. We have to play with a pace and pressure people. The other team right now is five guys that are able to defend because we don’t touch anybody right now and it’s tough to hit someone when you’re not skating either, our forecheck, not just in the offensive zone but in the neutral zone, we have to skate more and put people off-balance so we can get to the middle of the rink more.”
• On Tony DeAngelo, “Tony has been okay. He’s battling an up-hill battle because he missed so much of training camp, Tony knows he needs to be better but we have a lot of guys who need to be better.”
• On Georgiev, “he’s very matter of fact, very diligent in how he prepares, very focused, mentally tough and physically tough. We feel really good about his game.”
• D-pairs staying the same, “yes.”

12:17PM: Mika Zibanejad (flu), Brendan Lemieux (flu), Marc Staal (maintenance) and Chris Kreider (lower body) all skated during Tuesday’s practice after missing Sunday’s practice. (Mercogliano)

The lines being used during practice (Stephenson, Mercogliano, Brooks)

• Artemi Panarin, Mika Zibanejad, Pavel Buchnevich
• Chris Kreider, Brett Howden, Kaapo Kakko
• Brendan Smith, Ryan Strome, Jesper Fast
• Greg McKegg, Lias Andersson, Brendan Lemieux/Micheal Haley

The defense pairs were rotating with three (Trouba, Skjei, Fox) in blue jerseys and three (Staal, DeAngelo, Hajek) in white. (Mercogliano, Stephenson)