Gerard Gallant spoke after the Rangers beat the Wild and said (MSG):
- On the Panarin line and Lafreniere on the right side, “that line was real good and he’ll adjust to that. I was pretty happy, they played some great hockey and made some great plays.”
- On Shesterkin carrying the team until they get things in order, “that is what he does (laugh). He played great tonight, that first period, what was it? 3-0? Probably should have been 3-3. We took advantage of our opportunities and scored some nice goals, but Igor had to make some real key saves.”
- On the game, “I feel good, the guys played a real good game tonight, played hard and it’s really nice to see the scoring spread out around our group. Kaapo scored a big goal, Fil scored a big goal going to the net, you like to see stuff like that from our team.”
- How were you able to take overcome of the Wild being at home, “I think they were a bit rusty, obviously, even though they came out and had some great chances and our goaltender bailed us out a little bit, but it’s not easy to play your first game. And somebody said this morning about maybe they’ll have some rust and we’ll have a game under our belt and that is what it looked like to me tonight, but they are a real good hockey team and they wanted their best, obviously.”
- On offense throughout the lineup, “that is what we see with our lineup, there is a lot of skill and talent there and as long as we work hard we’ll scoring from all over the place.”