Gerard Gallant spoke after the Rangers loss in Toronto and said (MSG):
- On the game, “good game, good hockey game. We pushed at the end to try to get the tie, 2 or 3 good chances, fell a little bit short. We came in here last time and got outplayed bad and tonight was a pretty even game in my assessment.”
- You feel you played better tonight, “definitely, definitely.”
- On Strome saying that faceoffs “killed them” tonight, “we were bad at it, but I don’t think it killed us by any means. Toronto is one of the best, if not the best faceoff team in the league, they won a lot of draws, but it didn’t have an outcome on the game for me.”
- On faceoff struggles, “the last month, if we go back and do our stats report tonight, I think we are 12th or 13th in the league, so there isn’t a big emphasis on it. When you have one bad night like tonight, you get a little pissed off, but there is not an issue.”
- Did you notice being more physical than usual, “not at all, for me. I thought we played a pretty good game, moved the puck well. The first six minutes, I thought we backed up and Toronto took it to us, but after that I thought it was back and forth, an even hockey game, scoring chances were pretty close. I like the way we played, I like our chances if we come in here against a real good team like Toronto and play the same game.”
- You seem less upset than other nights, “we played the right way. If we play this way we are going to win a lot of hockey games. That is what we are saying the last four games, you’ve seen me when we’ve won games and I wasn’t too happy, tonight we played good enough to win, had a chance to win, someone had to lose tonight, both teams were 4-0 in the last four, I like the we played for the most part.”
- On Julien Gauthier, “he’s playing real well, it’s good to see. He had a couple of great chances tonight, he scored the other night, we like what we see, he’s playing real good, confident.”
- On the Gauthier, Chytil, Lafreniere line, “they are playing good, creating chances, skating, we like what we see, obviously.”