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

• It looked like the team was ready to go, “Yea, I thought we had a real good first period, real solid, controlled the play and just played the way we wanted to play and it was real good. First four minutes of the second wasn’t as good, they came out, which we expected, but I liked a lot of the way we played in the first period.”

• On Halak needing to make some saves, “More than a couple, but he made some good ones, definitely in the second period he made some key saves at key times and played a real strong game for us.”
• On why Halak played, “He’s on our team, he’s a big part of our group and no goalie in the NHL is going to play 82 games. Igor has played great, Jaro’s played really good. He had one bad game and we’ve liked the way he plays and he’s a big part of our group and that was part in the plan and that is what we stuck with. There is confidence in 23-guys and he’s a big part of it.”
• On strong defensive plays leading to offense, “It usually happens like that, we always say that if you play good, strong defense you are going to get opportunities and we took advantage of those opportunities. It was good to get five goals against a good team over there, we played hard, played well and played strong defensively, especially in the first, it was real good.”
• On the PP getting goals, “For sure, anytime you see the numbers and get some PPs. I thought they did a good job tonight and moved the puck around and it was nice to score PP goals for sure.”
• On Kakko, “He was outstanding, I thought he was great, made some great plays on those goals. Even in Tampa I thought he played a hard, gritty game in Tampa, so really like the way he’s played the last couple, for sure.”
• “Real happy with it. You win against teams and build points up and come back from the Christmas break and three tough games and we got three points out of it. Want better, but the road trip was tough, Tampa is a great team, Florida is a good team and to leave here with three of four points, I’ll take it.”