Gerard Gallant met with the media following the Rangers loss to Columbus and said (NYR, MSG):

• On the game, “not good, not good enough, obviously.”
• Anything in particular jump out, “We weren’t…we were far from good enough, we were slow, I didn’t like the way we played at all. I like our team being an aggressive forechecking team, I didn’t see much of that, I thought we were a step behind all night from a team that played back to back games. Disappointed with that, speed of our game wasn’t good.”

• The players were saying it wasn’t as bad as it looked, they just didn’t finish their chances, “Fair, but still not close to being good enough, that is why we lost the game. We had chances, we hit crossbars, but we weren’t good enough. I always said, I do care if we win or lose, but I don’t care if we win or lose as long as we play the right way and we didn’t play well enough. I can’t say that was…we can’t blame Halak and can’t say we were good enough, because we weren’t. We still didn’t play a good game. When we play good games, it was the first game of the season against Tampa Bay, that was a solid game. Competitive, go to the net, play strong, manage the puck well and we still haven’t done that the last two games.”
• What did you think of Halak, “well, obviously he didn’t like one goal, I give him that, but this is far from Halak’s fault, far from Halak’s fault.”
• Did you see their frustration on the ice when they couldn’t score, “yea, I didn’t like the body language of our players, I really didn’t like it and you could see it. We were talking to the linesman more than we were talking about our teammates. Let’s go play the game, we’re big boys and we had some chances to get back in it when it was 3-1, we had a couple of real good chances early in the third and didn’t bury it and it just seemed to get away from us.”
• How is Chytil, “he’s day-t0-day, we’ll reassess him tomorrow and see how he is. Big loss early in the game.”
• Did you see the play, “I didn’t see it until I looked on video after. I don’t think it was a vicious play, I don’t think he meant to hurt him, but he still got him with a shoulder to the head. But I don’t think there was any intent at all, but it happened.”
• You want to see more aggression and to play faster, “I want to play faster, when we play faster we’re a much better team. When we play faster we have more body contact and it’s all three zones. We looked slow, like we were the team that played back to back games.”
• Did you start Halak to get him into a rhythm, “no, he’s our goalie and we’ve got a busy schedule coming up. Benny sits down with us and we pick our games and if the schedule allows us and nobody gets hurt then we sort of go by that schedule. He’s a good goalie, had a great game in Winnipeg, tonight wasn’t as good, but it’s all part of it. It’s far from his fault.”