Gerard Gallant met with the media following the Rangers win over Dallas and said (NYR, MSG):
- On the game, “Much better, they competed, played hard, played the way we wanted them to play.”
- On the response after the last two games, “I was real happy with the response. Like I said, the game didn’t start out the way we wanted, but just got back to playing our game, work hard, compete hard, more aggressive. So I like the way everybody played tonight.”
- On goals from the depth players, “Yea, that’s huge. Can’t be the top guys all the time . There were some greasy goals around the net front of the net, Nemo’s goal, just battling, winning battles. That’s what we talked about, playing hard at both blue paints and I thought we played hard, a good, solid hockey game all around. “
- Was it a “must win,”yea, mentally it was an important game. Again, if we would have lost and played well I would have been satisfied. We want to win every game but I liked the way the team played because the last two I wasn’t happy, but tonight we played the right way, did the right things, competed hard, everybody was involved, not five or seven guys, it was everybody, that’s key to me.”
- On going 11 and 7 and winning both times, “you keep that in mind, I’m not going to remember that (smile). We talk about minutes for some of our key defensemen and that is the main reason we went with it.”
- So it was to manage the defensive minutes, “a little bit, maybe somebody bumps up just a little bit.”
- On sitting Ryan Reaves, “just a coaches decision, wanted to change some things up. Nothing he did wrong, it’s just that is what we wanted to go with.”
- On Lindgren and Fox, “I mean, they had one tough game, minus four and, again, I didn’t put it on them as a pair, they had a tough night and they admit that, but we know they’re going to be together. You put a few other guys in, it takes a few minutes away from them. It doens’t hurt those guys to play less minutes and be a big part of our group.”
- Do you think Lindgren and Fox played well, “I think everybody played well. Personally, when I watch the game back I’ll be able to tell you more, but I’m sort of in charge of the forwards and Murph is on the D, I didn’t notice any mistakes, that is for sure. They played hard and played solid.”
- On the Dallas forecheck, “They are a real good forechecking team, they do that real well. I thought we were tighter, more compact in the d-zone, talked about stop giving up these 20 chances a game, you can’t win be successful doing that. I thought we got to more pucks, were first on pucks more and then there was support when we got the pucks and we didn’t spend as much time in our zone as we had the last two games.”