Gerard Gallant spoke after practice today and said (NYR):
- Is Nemeth possible for tomorrow, “Not right now, but it’s day to day.”
- He would have to be activated from IR, “Yea, all that stuff has to happen. I really don’t know, we’ve been speculating for a week and a half, it’s not fair to anybody.”
- What is the key to better starts, “It’s just doing things the right way, mentally getting prepared for those games. For whatever reason, recently, a couple of games before the break and a couple of games after, we just gotta get off to better starts and I think it’s all mental. Get yourself prepared and do your workouts and focus on your first shift and then things will take care of itself.”
- Is it an issue with mindset early on, “Well, we’re trying. I just told you what we are talking about, we’ll see what it is. Teams go through that stuff, it’s the way that things are. I like the way we battle back and win games or get points like we did the other night, but I want us to play 60 minutes. That is what we demand as coaches and that is what they demand when you are a good team. Hopefully we’ll get back to it. Again, I watch games every night and I see a lot of good teams doing the same thing. It happens. I’m worried about my team and hopefully we’ll get better starts and play a good 60 minutes.”
- Did you see more offense being created on Thursday, “definitely, I thought we did a lot good things, a lot of good scoring chances and Greiss was the first star, he played really well, Shesty had a great game and I definitely thought we had opportunities and the only thing that disappointed me about the game was the start of the game….after that we played really good.”
- Were they trying to be more aggressive shooting on Thursday, “yea, put more pucks to the net and, like I said, we had a lot of breaks and wanted to get people around the net a little more, a little bit more traffic and more screens and I thought we did a better job of that in the second and third period, definitely.”
- Has that been in an effort to get more at 5 on 5, “yea, but, again, you gotta know our team. We got some skill guys and make those seam plays East/West and score a lot of nice goals like that. Sometimes you gotta give up some shots to get those opportunities, too. I like when we get more shots on net, but I also like what Panairn and some of those guys can do too.”
- On K’Andre Miller scoring, “he felt real good about it. We had a faceoff play set up and he goes down the wall and with his speed and big reach, the way he scored that goal, he feels real good about his game and we feel real good about the way he’s playing. I think he’s taken another step, a real good young player.”
- On only getting one PP in each of the last two games, “I thought the last two games, and I said it to the referee, he did both games. I really liked the way they called the last couple of games, they did a great job, let the players play the games. I was really happy with the officiating. I think we gotta get a little bit more aggressive going to the net and make people haul you down and we didn’t do enough of that cycling down low and the one time we did it they got a penalty for tripping. We gotta get involved a little bit more going to the net. Again, I was happy with our second and third period.”
- Has Schneider’s adaptability been impressive, “yea and that is part of it. You can’t worry about who you are playing with on any given night. Fortunately we’ve had our forward groups pretty much together, Kreider/Zibanejad have had lots of different wingers and same with Panarin/Strome. You like to play with those games, that is familiarity, but in our game, with Covid and injuries happening, it’s good to play with everybody and I think he’s done a great job and played with different partners in the minors and that definitely helps.”
- Is Ottawa like Detroit and young and scrappy, “Yea, young, talented team that works their tale off every night. If you go into Ottawa and think you are going to get two points that are easy you are second guessing yourself because it’s a real good hockey team. DJ Smith has them playing a real good style and they still got some key guys out of their lineup, but that is a real good, upcoming team that plays hard every night.”
The lines used at practice were (Walker):
- Chris Kreider, Mika Zibanejad, Alexis Lafreniere
- Artemi Panari, Ryan Strome, Barclay Goodrow
- Dryden Hunt, Filip Chytil, Julien Gauthier
- Greg McKegg, Kevin Rooney, Ryan Reaves
- Ryan Lindgren, Adam Fox
- K’Andre Miller, Jacob Trouba
- Patrik Nemeth, Braden Schneider
- Libor Hajek, Zac Jones