Gerard Gallant met with the media following the Rangers win over Tampa and said (MSG, NYR):
- On the game, “It’s what I expected, to be honest with you. Like I said, the preseason, the last couple of games weren’t great, but I knew that the intensity would pick up tonight and I thought we played great. The guys were ready for this and the last time we played this team was in the semi-finals for the Stanley Cup. It was a good win, we played well, played hard and everybody was a big part of the win tonight.”
- Does it mean more that you beat Tampa, “Not a thing, not to me. We had a great series with those guys last year, they beat us in six, so you move on from that. But that didn’t mean one thing, it’s a matter of getting two points and getting the first game under your belt and we played really well, have to get ready for the next one.”
- On Vitali Kravtsov’s injury, “Just that he’s day to day, upper body and we’ll evaluate him tomorrow. You can never tell much early on after a game, the doctors will tell us tomorrow.”
- What did you think of Kakko on the first line, “Played good, everybody played good. I was happy with everybody and I thought he did a real good job. Again, we had some power plays so they had to sit a little bit overall because the first unit was doing real well and didn’t score a few of the PPs early, so those guys didn’t get on the ice that much, but I was happy with them all. They did a real good job.”
- What makes the PP so lethal, “fast, skilled, they are talented guys and they’ve been together. The only new guy is Trocheck on that unit and he knows the hole where he is playing, but they are talented guys and confident in each other.”
- On Kreider and Zibanejad creating offense on the PK, “speed, speed, read off each other, when a team makes a mistake it’s the same as when we make a mistake on the PK, you give up opportunities and when they see that mistake Mika just pounces on it and with Kreids’ speed he opens up stuff for him.”
- Does all the special teams play give you an advantage, “It did tonight, it some nights it’s not going to, but tonight it worked out real good for us and like I said, we did a good job and the only little blip was the 3 on 5 goal, but they got some great players over there too and made some great plays.”
- “I hope we play like this most nights, this is what I see and believed in our team. I always talk about preseason and it’s fun when we play well, but when you play bad you know that it’s not really your team, they are trying to stay away from injuries and get ready for this game tonight, so this is what I expected from our group tonight, it really is and I thought all those young kids played like men tonight, so our team looked like a different team than we did last year early in the year, so hopefully we can continue that.”
- On Zibanejad, “he was outstanding, PK, PP, the shorthanded goal, the PP goal, the line played great, our team played great, but he was definitely the leader.”
- On the defensive structure, “Well, if you watched us last year at this time we were pretty loose in the defensive zone so I thought we did a real good job there. That is the biggest thing and I talk about that, I think it’s from the kids growing up. You need five guys on the lines and they are used to each other and last year they came in and had a new system and coaching staff and a lot of the players were here, but I think that after 30 games we were better, but tonight we were a lot better defensively and that is really important and that is where it really starts. If you we are going to be a good team we can’t give up the Grade A chances that we did last year in the first half of the season and tonight was a good start with that. Hopefully we’ll continue playing like that.”