Gerard Gallant met with the media following the loss to St. Louis and said (NYR, MSG):
- The players said that lessons needed to be learned from tonight, “I hope so, a lot of lessons.”
- What lessons, “the way we started, the three penalties, and we called the penalties off and that was the best part of it and to give them up three goals, just looked soft, we looked soft.”
- Was pulling Shesterkin a reminder that he can’t bail them out every night, “exactly, how many times can you do it? He had no chance on the first goal, a couple of tap ins, no chance at all. You get frustrated, you hope you wake your guys up, it didn’t really, but they should be embarrassed a little bit the way, the way this guy plays them all year and then they come out tonight and play like that, after a game in Minnesota that we weren’t too good in.”
- On the response after the Minnesota game, “no, not what I expected.”
- What is the message on the bench when the game gets out of hand, “it wasn’t too positive, I sort of shut my mouth and let them play because there are not many good things that you can say. You are frustrated, the fourth goal was really the tough one to swallow, 15 seconds into the second period after playing the way we did in the first. You get frustrated and you gotta move on, that is all you can do, but it was real disappointing.”
- Is there anything about the last two games that makes you think you need to change things, “no. Again, I’m not making excuses for our roster, we got some guys out and it’s showing a little bit in the last two games. Hopefully, we can get it back in Dallas and start to play a little bit better hockey. I’m not blaming the guys, when you’ve got things going like we had all year, pretty smooth, pretty regular lineup, it makes it easy to roll your lines over and know what you are going to get and now it seems like we are making a lot of mistakes the last two games.”
- Has the slot been a problem the last two games, “it’s been all year, let’s not kid ourselves.”
- What can you do better about it, “defend it better, defend it better.”