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

• Looked like there was a lot of skating today, “yea, get rid of rest of that turkey dinner I guess (smile). Didn’t get rid of enough last night.”
• How do you think practice went, “I thought it was great, really good, real happy with everything in practice today.”

• How do you feel now about last night’s game now, “I felt a lot of the same things that I felt last night, but you gotta move past that. We were awful, we address that and hopefully we’ll play a lot better tomorrow in Tampa, we better. I’m sure we will.”
• Does the strong play before the break help you move on from last night, “I sure hope so. You are going to have bad games, we talk about that, it’s just disappointing…the game was a big game. We are playing Washington, they jumped ahead of us in the standings, you thought you’d get a better effort than we showed last night. Washington came in here with a perfect game plan, played hard, played solid and we just didn’t have any pushback. So that was frustrating, but we move on and get ready for the next one, tweak a few things and see where it goes.”
• You want to see how they bounce back tomorrow, “and we’ve always done that, we’ve always bounced back. You have a tough game and everybody gets pissed off and you move on. There wasn’t much laughing and smiling out there today, but they worked hard and that is what you want.”
• On the line changes today, “Honestly, I wouldn’t go by these lines right now. You know what I’m like, I could change things by the time I get down the hallway, but we’ll see what is going to happen. You could pick a lot of guys from last night and this morning of who is not going to play tomorrow. I don’t know who it’s going to be right now, but we’ll decide that in the next 24-hours.”
• Is it surprising that you want to make line changes after one bad game, “It isn’t because I’ve been switching them quite a bit. It wasn’t two games where they were playing outstanding hockey, even in the ten game stretch there were a lot of different combinations. I don’t like that, but I want to try and find guys that will be consistent and play hard and play well together. You get a good game here, a good couple of periods there and that is what frustrates you as a coach. We’re better than that. I want guys to get opportunities. You see that three weeks ago we put The Kids with Mika and it went well for some games and then it tailed off real bad. It frustrates you as a coach, you want to give opportunities to people and ometimes they take it, sometimes they let it fall a little bit. My job is to win games, we’re not developing right now. We develop in practice, but we want to win games, we’re a good hockey team.”
• Has it been in your mind that Kreider, Mika and Kakko were good together earlier in the season, “yea, that is a combination today from practice and we’ll probably give it a shot tomorrow, but I’m not sure of the other ones right now, honestly. We got here this morning and we had more problems to worry about than lines. We had a little meeting and showed some video and positive stuff…not from last night, but positive stuff to get them back on track and we had a good hard practice and that was the main concern. It wasn’t about the lines. Again, they might be that tomorrow, but I’m far from doing that. We’ll look at it on the airplane today and try and put some things together.”
• Even if it was just during practice, do you think that the line changes could spark some guys, “I hope so, that is what it’s all about, playing hard, playing well, some guys may be a little frustrated or pissed off, but like I said, my job is to try and win hockey games, that is what we are trying to do.”
• Would you want to see Panarin and Trocheck again, “for sure. When you sit down in the summer and you’ve got your team and lines and you are saying, we want this to work and this to work and….like I said, we’ll see where it goes, but that is obviously a good pairing we’d like to have going….I think Kreider plays with Mika really well, we’ve seen that for a number of years and I want to get back to that.”
• What kind of sign are you looking for from Panarin and Trocheck to see that they are clicking, “More going direct. Some of the drills we did today, more net driving and not just the outside perimeter plays, more going to the net, more shooting the puck a little bit and creating not as many turnovers. Turnovers are a big part of what we talk about all the time.”
• Any reason for Lafreniere being moved down, “not really, no. I want him to be better, obviously. Laffy has gotten some chances to play with good people and he’s played well at times, but it’s inconsistency and, again, there was a bunch of them last night. Trust me, there were a bunch of them last night, so Laffy is getting maybe knocked down today in practice. Not saying he’s going to be there tomorrow, I don’t know where he’s going to be tomorrow, but sometimes its a wake up call for the kids and we’ll see. Again, we’ve only got one extra forward so we’ll see what we are going to do.”
• So it’s about consistency with Lafreniere, “Yea…I want him to be better. He wants to be better and I want him to be better and you’ve got to be consistent more…but he’s not alone.”
• When the PP is clicking what do you see, “The opposite of last night (smile). Last night we were sloppy and not too often we are sloppy and even the shots we were getting through weren’t threats. They are usually threats, Mika’s shots, but it seemed like there was no net-front screen, the crispness of the passes wasn’t there. It just looked sloppy and we still had our set ups and some looks, but not near as dangerous as other games. Even when we don’t score in other games, we hit goal posts and get good chances and last night it just looked like it was out of sync.”
• Are there any bad habits the PP can fall into, “we gotta shoot the puck. When it’s good, Foxy shoots a couple of pucks, you get some deflections in front of the net, and then it opens up the side plays for Mika and Bread. You just can’t go to the same two plays all the time and expect they are going to work. You have to do the little things in front of the net and battle and…what is it? 22%? It’s not a bad number, but with that talent we should be better than that and we know that. Sure, they hit some goal posts, but you gotta put the puck in the net and that is the bottom line.”
• Would adding a lefty shot to the PP give you a different threat, “No,  not worried about that, these guys are too good to put somebody else in there right now.”

12PM: At Rangers practice on Wednesday, the lines being used were (Walker):

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