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

• Did you have enough impact on that game, “No, I agree with you. It was sort of flat. The first period was 6-7 chances each way and a little wide open, not great d-zone coverage by us, a little sleepy. It was one of those games.”

• On the flu going around the team, “the energy level didn’t look great, whether it’s that or not I don’t know. I’m not going to yell at them, scream at them. Today we were hoping to have some good jump and it wasn’t and look at Montreal, it’s a pretty even game over there, they got one bounce at the end and beat us 2-1. It wasn’t awful, but we expect better from our group.”
• Did you not get enough traffic around the net, “definitely. We had a lot of perimeter play and it’s like we talked about, Montreal clogs the middle of the ice real good and they did a good job with that. We had some good chances, he made some good saves over there and obviously our guy made some real good saves too.”
• Is too many games in a row being down late, “like I said, I don’t think we played our best game, whatever the reason. It happens once in a while and it kind of bit us a little bit tonight. We’ll move on and get ready for tomorrow.”
• On Shesterkin keeping you in the game, “he made some great saves and their guy made some big saves early too. He made two great saves on Laffy in front of the net, a couple of posts, but Igor made some huge saves for us.”
• On no PP goals in four games, “I’d like to see them score…they had a couple of chances, but we’re not getting enough looks, not shooting enough pucks, not getting enough looks.”
• On swapping Vesey and Kravtsov, “Try and change things up, we haven’t scored in two games pretty much, the OT goal, goal with one second. I just wanted to switch it up.”