Gerard Gallant met with the media following the win over NJ and said (MSG/NYR):

• Are things starting to turn for the team, “I hope it’s turning a little bit because we didn’t have much luck in the first part. It was bad, the good, and okay after that. Started real slow and unfortunately, they got a couple of breaks, in the first four minutes it was 2-0 early and we battled back through that and we had a great second period, I thought. We played more of our game in the second period than we did in a long time so I was happy with the second for sure.”

• On turnovers and starting to limit them after a certain point, “I hope so, there weren’t as many…I just thought in the first period we were playing passive, weren’t closing the gaps, weren’t staying up at our own blue line and when you let Hughes and Nico Hischier get the blue line and make their plays they are going to spend a lot of time in your zone. They didn’t get a lot of shots, but we weren’t playing our game in the first period and were disappointed about that and then in the second we started to forecheck more as a group of five and better gaps in the neutral zone and started battling back and playing our game a lot better.”
• Was it as resilient of a win as you’ve had this season, “it’s a big one. They are a good team, they have a good record and are playing with a lot of confidence and hopefully this will give us some confidence because they played very well.”
• On the two goals in seven seconds, “That’s a big PP goal by Trocheck and obviously some good plays there and obviously K’Andre made a great play on the Kakko goal. They gave us some energy and, again, the third period wasn’t great, but I don’t think there were many scoring chances both ways. It was sort of making sure nobody made a mistake and that was more of what I saw in the thirds.”
• On shifting the lines around, “you must know why (laugh)….I change the lines too much. I wasn’t happy and I just wanted to see what would happen. I thought it went better…I’m tired of changing the lines every other game, but you gotta do something when you are a coach. I want the lines to stay the same, but I didn’t like what I was seeing.”
• On picking spots to change the lines and changing them because of the first period, “exactly what it was. Again, I told you how many times? I want to keep the lines the same, let them go and give them a chance, but I wasn’t liking what I was seeing.”
• On The Kid Line bringing energy, “The first two shifts after we changed I thought they were really good and played pretty good and obviously Fil had a big goal at the end.”
• On the difference in the team now vs a couple of weeks ago, “we talked after the first period and fortunately we got that big goal by Kreider late in the first to get us back in the hockey game, but it wasn’t a good feeling in the first period. We talked about it and how we need to be more aggressive, we can’t sit back and let the team dictate how the play is going to go. We’re too good a team to do that and I thought we were better after that.”