Gerard Gallant met with the media following the win over Philly and said (MSG, NYR):

• On the game, “we played great until that five minute major and then we hung on after that, we weren’t the same team, lost our momentum and couldn’t get it back, but we did a great job killing the penalty and didn’t give them a whole lot, but Shesty made some great saves on the five minute major for sure.”

• What did you see on the Dryden Hunt penalty, “what I saw was that he definitely hit him, but I didn’t see any jump or anything like that, I just see him go in and unfortunate that he banged his head against the glass and got cut. I disagree with the call, but we’ll move on.”
• On the shuffling without Hunt and Goodrow, “It was trying to find guys in the right spot. Things were going real good there and all the sudden you lose a guy that played real well, a top-end guy the last couple games, and we just couldn’t get our momentum back. I think it was guys killing those penalties and guys probably got pretty tired from killing those penalties and it just seemed like we couldn’t catch up the rest of the night and the last five minutes I thought we played really well.”
• On Shesterkin on the PK, “a good penalty kill is a good goalie and that is what he did. At the right time of the game he stood up and made some unreal saves.”
• On Kaapo Kakko, “he played good.”
• Are you impressed that Kakko has fit in well with Mika and Kreider, “They are used to playing top-six, top-nine minutes and he looks real confident and made some great passes tonight and I really like the kid, he’s doing the right job and getting confidence.”
• On how the team is playing lately, “first 10 games I’d say we weren’t playing well, but found ways to get points. Last 10 games I got no issue with the game we played. Tonight was a tougher one and I said it before, at 5PM, I wasn’t sure which way we were going to go, you don’t play for four days, it’s like a playoff series and you are playing every second night and the body is bumping, tonight we had four days off before a game and it just didn’t feel right. Everybody felt refreshed and we came out of the gate good and then we just couldn’t get it back.”
• On Jacob Trouba, “That is a typical game for Troubs, he plays hard, battles hard every night, he’s big on the PK, scored a nice PP goal for us also, he’s been doing it from day one of the regular season, he’s been great.”
• Was it encouraging to see the second PP unit get a goal, “great for them, great confidence for them moving the puck around. They don’t get a lot of minutes and they stepped up and had a big goal for us.”
• Will that goal get them more minutes, “If the first unit played like they did tonight then they will get more minutes. (laugh) That won’t happen too often.”
• Could you have made simpler decisions in the third, “100%, we tried to get cute in the d-zone instead of making the simple plays, play north/south hockey. We made some east/west plays and it cost us and we turned pucks over and Shesty made a couple big saves at the start of the third, but after that there wasn’t much going on.”