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

• Was the Caps structure what caused problems tonight, “that was part of it, but let’s face it, one team showed up ready to win a hockey team and the other team didn’t.”

• Was that because of the four days off, “they had the same thing, we just didn’t play well, we looked sloppy everywhere, even the PP, missing shots, missing the net a lot. We just had a bad game and it was a full effort, besides the goaltender, he was outstanding again and played a great game and did a good job, but a lot of guys didn’t show up to play hard tonight and give credit to the team over there, they played hard, battled every shift, played the game the right way for 60-minutes.”
• On the two goals against late in the second, “yea, I would say…the third one was a tough one, but still, there was a lot of game left, but the third one was a tough one to give up.”
• Were you okay with how the game was called by the refs, “we didn’t get any breaks tonight from the officials. They called the game….we were worse, we were a lot worse than…I’m not saying what they were, but I thought…there’s goalie interference, he went in the crease, we didn’t put him in the crease, he made contact…so. Wasn’t much contact, but it was enough contact for me. Anyway they had a tough game, I thought Gauthier had a couple of chances when it was 1-0, the breakaway…but you get by that. Again, we were garbage tonight and didn’t deserve to win, they had nothing to do with us losing. Trust me. I didn’t think they were great, but they had nothing to do with us losing the hockey game.”
• You weren’t liking what you were seeing and that is why you changed the lines, “yea, didn’t know what to do. Scrambled the lines again….disappointing, really disappointed in our group tonight. Played soft, didn’t finish checks, reaching with sticks all night all over the ice. It’s the same break for the other team, it’s different if they kept playing, but if you get four days off like Washington did and they came in and played a perfect game, played hard, finished their checks, nothing dirty, that is all we had to do and we didn’t do none of that.”
• Was this a one-off, “I hope it is because we played pretty good hockey the last ten games, besides that one tonight. This was a tough game, they are one point behind us before the game starts and you come out with that performance and it isn’t good enough for our group.”