Chris Kreider did not practice today, but he skated on his own and is being listed as doubtful for tomorrow. (NYR)

Julien Gauthier did not skate on his own or practice and will be OUT tomorrow against Montreal. (NYR)

Ryan Lindgren, Artemi Panarin, and Vitali Kravtsov did not practice due to the stomach bug that Gerard Gallant said was running through the team. (NYR)

Gerard Gallant spoke after practice and said (NYR):

• Is it wait and see with the players dealing with the stomach bug, “they all play through it as we’ve been doing the last week and a half or so. Hopefully, it doesn’t get to the point where they can’t.”
• Is Leschyshyn going to play, “he’s in. He’s playing.”
• Any early impressions or conversations with him, “we talked to him and showed him our system tape like everybody does and new guys coming in, but he played a lot of the same systems in Vegas, Cassidy’s defensive zone system. It’s not a big adjustment, it’s just getting to know new players and new linemates, but he’s a good kid, character kid and he’ll come in an work his tail off.”
• Will he start at center or wing, “Center.”
• Do you recall him from Vegas, “he was a young kid when I was there. I think there were two training camps where I knew him and he was going back to junior and that type of thing, getting his feet wet. I called him Curtis more than I called him Jake, that is the sad part because I knew his dad when we played. I told him that hopefully, I won’t make that mistake again, but he said ‘don’t worry about it.'”
• What does an emotional win like Thursday do for the locker room, “well it wasn’t emotional until the last second (laugh). It was one of those games where there wasn’t a whole lot going on, defensive battle and there was lots of play in the neutral zone and there wasn’t a great deal of scoring chances either way. I thought we played okay, but it was looking like we were going to lose 1-0 and fortunately Key makes an unbelievable play and we get traffic at the net. You go from being really down to an emotional win like that was really good, so it was a great win for us coming back and getting two points in that game.”
• Are you starting to see traits from last year’s team come through, “I really believe we played pretty good hockey the first part of the season this year and we didn’t get the points that we thought we should have got from it, but overall I thought we played pretty good, especially the last month and a half and we are starting to find ways to win hockey games where we were losing in the first 20 games of the season. I think we got a good team, I think most of the guys are happy with the way we are playing and the way they are playing, and the way the team is playing as a whole. There is no reason why we can’t win a lot of hockey games and you go on these uphill climbs like we’ve been lately. Should we have won all of those games? Probably not, but we won a couple that was similar to what we did last year, games that we won that we probably shouldn’t have won, and a couple of those games in this streak that we probably shouldn’t of won, but found ways to win. Whether it was great goaltending or a real good PP, but overall I like the style we played the last six weeks. We’ve played a good team game and worked hard and everybody is contributing to our team.”
• On Lafreniere’s game on Thursday, “Laffy played hard the other night. Like everybody else it wasn’t a great game for either team, I thought. A slow game, but it was one of those defensive games but I thought he showed up and played well.”
• On the plays at both ends of the ice that Zibanejad made on the winner, “that is what Mika does for us. He played hard, the play in front of the net was a good battle with their defenseman, both of those guys went down, Mika took him down a little bit, there could have been a call. He took Mika down and there could have been a call and Foxy turns the puck over and makes an unbelievable play. In OT those plays happen and usually around the net like that, but I was happy with the way we played with aggression in OT. We didn’t sit back, we took the puck back a few times and reset things and I really like the way we started the OT.”
• What makes Zibanejad so good defensively, “his hockey sense, his hockey IQ is real good. We talked about it last year about being one of those candidates for a Selke, that is the type of player he is in my eyes. He’s very good offensively, plays great on the PP, but what coaches really like about him is that he plays that 200ft game and does it every night for us.”