Gerard Gallant met with the media following the loss in OT to Ottawa and said (MSG):

• “It wasn’t good enough. We had two chances in OT, but we didn’t play well enough to even be there, to be honest with you. We were fortunate to be 2-2, but, no, it wasn’t good enough…., especially the first two periods.”

• Were you unhappy with the whole game, “The third period we were better at times, but, no, we just played, probably 15 minutes of the game we played well, the way we want to play and we were fortunate to be where we were at. Shesterkin made some great saves to keep us in it early.”
• You seemed to get momentum from Trouba’s fight, “that was one spark and Goody tried to spark something up because we were pretty flat before that. That was pretty frustrating for our group. It’s too bad that you have to have a couple of fights to get your team motivated to play hard, they just gotta play harder and start better and play better.”
• It seemed like you were controlling the first period, “I wouldn’t say we controlled it. They weren’t great either, I’d say. We had probably 15 good minutes of a 65-minute hockey game and that is not close to good enough for our group. We are coming in our building and just beat the team in Ottawa and played a decent game and come in and play like that tonight, after losing the last couple at home the way we did, it’s not acceptable for our group.”
• Is there something to playing the same team twice, “No, nothing.”
• On the frustration level, “It’s frustrating as a coach, I’ll tell you that and I’m sure the players are frustrated, but we tried different things, we had a morning skate this morning, which we don’t usually do, changed up a little bit to try and get some jump and it just looked like we were coming flat again.”
• On Kravtsov scoring, “it was a big goal, he buried a chance and that will be good for his confidence moving forward.”
• What is the message heading into tomorrow, “We better play better than we did tonight. You gotta get ready, it’s back to back at home. No travel, it’s easy, just get ready to play a good game tomorrow.”
• How would you assess the PP, “It looked pretty sloppy and then we had three great chances and hit two posts at the end of it. It wasn’t as good as it usually is, but, again, we had scoring chances and turned a lot of pucks over with our entries and didn’t get much done and then 30 seconds left on the PP they had three unbelievable chances….but we gotta score.”
• Is there a common thread between all the games you keep blowing at MSG, “No, tonight is different than those other games. Tonight was a team that, I thought, played better than we did tonight, obviously, but it was a 2-1 hockey game, so it was different than the games we lost to Jersey and Edmonton.”