4:19 PM: Gerard Gallant spoke after practice today and said (NYR):
- How do you think the last week has gone, “winning always makes it easier. Like I said, I wasn’t overly happy with the last game, it was a tough trip traveling all the way out there for two games, Vegas to Colorado, and we found ways to win, that is the most important thing. Everything in the trip wasn’t perfect, do we want to get better at some stuff, consistency, but we played some good hockey on the trip too. The Vegas game, I thought, for the most part was 40-45 minutes was excellent, we had a little bit of a letdown in the second period, but overall it was a successful trip to get four points against those two teams, no matter if they have injuries or what they had, that is the way it goes in this league and we come back home and have to be ready for a real good game against NJ.”
- Is it encouraging that you are finding ways to win, “I hope so because last year it happened a lot to our team and this year it was going the other way. I think we’ve played pretty well for the most part of the season, we’ve had some real tough losses that have given us some wakeup calls, again, those 29-games are over, we have to move forward. When you work hard you get those breaks and that is what we gotta get back to and make sure we are working hard every night and when you do that you are going to win more games than you are going to lose.”
- Have you liked the line enough to keep them together, “today I did, might change tomorrow. I don’t want to change my lines, I want to keep them going, I want guys playing good. I look at our lineup and it’s pretty consistent, those top three lines, we know what our fourth line and what they do for us and they did a good job lately, but our top three lines, on any given night you could say that it’s our best line. That is what it should be, consistency, play well and go through your whole team and whole lineup and play well, I like our team.”
- Have you seen a difference in Shesterkin since the last Devils game, “I’m not going back that far, go to the last two games and Igor’s really put our team on his shoulders. He’s carried us, played great hockey, made some key saves at key times and that is what we need. He can’t do it every night, obviously, the last two games he’s been outstanding and you need great goaltending to win in this league and that is what he’s done for us. He’s had the odd bad game here and there, very odd, but he’s our top player.”
11:52 AM: At Rangers practice on Sunday, the lines being used are (Stephenson):
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- Alexis Lafreniere, Mika Zibanejad, Kaapo Kakko
- Artemi Panarin, Filip Chytil, Barclay Goodrow
- Chris Kreider, Vincent Trocheck, Jimmy Vesey
- Sammy Blais, Jonny Brodzinski, Julien Gauthier/Vitali Kravtsov