Gerard Gallant spoke after practice today and said (NYR):

• On Panarin and Zibanejad together, “we’ll see where it goes, see where it goes.”
• Do they fit together style-wise, “I wouldn’t put them together if I didn’t think they were a good match.”

• On finding ways to win helping lighten the mood, “I’d like to win games by playing real good hockey, we weren’t great last game. We won, but we weren’t great. We gotta be better than that to win against certain teams, but Shesterkin was outstanding and you find ways to win. Again, I’m happy we are winning games, but I wish we were playing a little better. I thought we played a pretty good second period, but beside that it wasn’t quite good enough, but, again, we won. We’ll take it.”
• On finding ways to lose games early in the season, “early in the year, no doubt that is what happened. I thought we played really well in some of those games that we lost and they all add up at the end. Last year we won a lot of those games, as we all know.”
• Have you seen their resiliency come back, “I hope so, I mean, there has definitely been some good in the four games, we won four in a row and we’ve played some good hockey. There has still been a period here and there where we didn’t play that well, but for the most part we’ve played pretty good hockey.”
• On the teams that they’ve beaten and the Leafs tomorrow, “real good hockey teams and hopefully it gets the best out of your team. Sometimes you look at the schedule and, before the season starts you always look at it and say ‘this is going to be a tough stretch’…you don’t know in the new NHL. Any team can beat you, you can beat any team if you play well. That is what I’m finding out.”
• Does it help out mentally to beat the strong teams, “not for me. You prepare for the team you are playing, there are some real good teams in our league and you just gotta prepare and play. The teams in the bottom of the standings can give you a good run. It doesn’t matter who you are playing, get ready to play and play hard, play your game.”
• On Trouba’s game, “He’s fine, battling hard, competing hard, a big part of our group. He makes mistakes like every other player in the league, it cost us one goal in the last game. That happens, that is part of the game and Troubs rebounds from that real well and that is what you like about veteran players and players like him. He’s not going to let a mistake or, you caused a goal, move on, get ready for the next shift and that is what you like about pros like that.”
• Is Trouba still playing through some nagging stuff, “fine as far as I know.”
• Is there a common thing you see with his or anybody’s turnovers, “turnovers are part of our game because you get pressure against you and stuff like that. Let’s face it, he tried to flip a puck and it didn’t flip. You can’t blame a guy for that, we laugh about it all the time. The NHL, there are a lot of times you are under pressure and flipping pucks and sometimes you miss them. It’s part of the game, you get pressure on you and you make a mistake, but it’s about rebounding from a mistake. There is not one player in this league that doesn’t make mistakes.”
• On swapping Trouba and Schneider against the Devils, “I thought our team was flat, I thought we did nothing in the first period that I liked. We talked about playing against a fast team, a quick team and we didn’t forecheck them, all we did was back off and give them time in our zone. We never forechecked like we can, we didn’t have good gaps like we can and when you do that against NJ or any team that plays that style and you are going to have a rough first period. Fortunately for us we got the big goal at the end of the period, that was huge for us and then we played a real good second period, I thought.”
• What does it do to the locker room to keep stacking wins even when you aren’t playing well, “It does a lot, it does a lot for coaches, for the locker room. Most teams, you’ll hear coaches talk ‘we won tonight, but we didn’t play our best hockey.’ Your not going to play your best hockey for 82 games, nobody does. The Boston Bruins don’t, they got a great record, you just keep…you take the two points and move on and get ready for the next game and try to make your team better, that is all we do.”

The lines being used today at Rangers practice are (Stephenson):

• Artemi Panarin, Mika Zibanejad, Barclay Goodrow
• Alexis Lafreniere, Filip Chytil, Kaapo Kakko
• Chris Kreider, Vincent Trocheck, Jimmy Vesey
• Sammy Blais, Jonny Brodzinski, Julien Gauthier, Vitali Kravtsov