David Quinn met with the media following the Rangers loss to Vancouver and said (MSG):
- What can you take out of the loss, “to be able to come back for how poorly we played in the first part of the game, I guess, is a good sign for sure. We did find some rhythm in the last 20, I thought we started playing with a little bit more oomph in the last five minutes of the second and then obviously we carried it over to the third, that is one of the silver linings and a good sign.”
- What sparked the change, “You get the goal, it gives you a chance when it could have been 6-0, or more, I think we felt fortunate and we did a nice job of taking advantage of an opportunity that our goalie gave us.”
- On the message in the second, “every time you look along the wall, with a wall battle, every single time in the first 35 minutes of the game they were beating us off walls, getting to the middle of the rink. At the end of the day it’s mano-e-mano, you gotta win battles and get into people. I know everyone is built differently but to me it’s way more of a mentality than anything, every loose puck they were getting, they won every battle in the first 35 minutes.” Obviously, to respond the way we did is a good sign and we have to build on it.”
- “The concern is how bad we can be during stretches, you aren’t going to have your legs every night and you aren’t going to be great every night but you have to manage a game and find a way to be structurally sound and learn to live another day. We haven’t found that yet, that is just not in our game right now and it’s something we have to understand, you just have to be sound, you have to be below the puck or above the puck depending on where you are on the ice, you gotta be on the D-side of people and you gotta make life hard for the other people with structure and positioning. We, unfortunately right now, don’t have that in our game. When we are bad with force plays and get panicky and it’s troubling.”
- On Buchnevich’s game, “I thought he got out of the gate slowly and struggled early on, so I made some changes and, probably because of penalty situations, I put him out there and he looked like he had more energy and I put him back on the spot where he started and he looked like he a bit more energy so I put him on the spot where he started and thought he had a good last 25-30 minutes.”
- On Brady Skjei not playing in the second, “we are looking for more out of him, he’s gotta play better and be more consistent.”
- On the 1st PP unit not starting late in the second, “tired, Kreider and Mika had got caught out there and they were too tired to start the PP.”
- On the push they had in the third and what it means, “we had stretches of that against NJ and when we do those things we have a chance to win and spend time in the offensive zone and are successful, it’s too sporadic, those stretches aren’t long enough and when we have a drop it’s too dramatic and we have to find that balance where, we might not be able to play like that for 60 minutes but your bad can’t be that bad.”