Gerard Gallant met with the media following the loss in Game 1 and said (NYR, MSG):

• On the game, “great game, great game with two team. I thought the first 25-minutes we were real good and dominated that part of the game and then they come back in the second and played really well after that too. It was one of those games and, obviously, three overtime periods, it’s tough to lose like that, but you get back on the horse and ready for the next game.”

• What shifted from the first to the second period, “we couldn’t play 60-minutes like that, I’d love to say we could, but the forecheck was great, we had a great opening 25-minutes and Pittsburgh is a proud team and they were gonna come back and played harder. I loved our start and after we made it 2-0 they started to play a lot better and took it to us a little bit. It was one of those games, back and forth, a lot of shots…nobody’s fault, everybody played hard.”
• Do you have an issue with the disallowed goal, “No. I’d like to say that I do, but you know what, if it was going the other way in a 3-3 hockey game…to me it was a 50/50 call and I sort of felt it was going to go against us. I can’t argue with that.”
• On Shesterkin, “He played great. For the season he had and he had 70-something shots and what did we have 63? Something like that. Both goalies are really good, actually, three goalies are really good.”
• Will the team be off on Wednesday, “yea, I think we’ll come in and probably relax and some stretching, or something like that, but not many guys will be on the ice tomorrow.”
• Was there anything specific the team wasn’t sharp at, “we weren’t, I thought we had a great 25-minutes and then it seemed like we started doing those little plays again instead of driving it deep and finishing our checks like we did in the first period. We started to get away from that a little bit and it cost us and obviously the penalties we got slowed our momentum a bit and then they scored that 5-on-3 goal. I thought we played real well, but when we started doing these little plays and turning it over in the neutral zone instead of driving it deep like we did in the first, that was the difference in the game.”
• On the Lafreniere, Kakko, Chytil line, “yea, they looked real good and had some great chances. Fil probably could have had four goals tonight and it’s too bad that one got disallowed, but I thought they played well.”
• Is it frustrating that they were down to 11 forwards and their third-string goalie, “that means nothing to us.”
• Is Ryan Lindgren okay, “he’s lower-body. He’d come out, come back, come out, will know more tomorrow.”
• Is there any carryover to the next game, “I hope it doesn’t go six periods. Before you start the series you see two teams that are pretty evenly matched, in my opinion, and I thought you saw that tonight.”
• On the Kakko, Chytil, Lafreniere line playing three OTs, “it does nothing different than it does for everybody else on their team and our team. Kids are young and fresh, it’s great for them, and they’ll probably respond better than the older guys.”