Gerard Gallant met with the media following the loss to Ottawa and said (NYR, MSG):
- On the game, “we lost, that is the bottom line. There was some good, a lot of bad, but some real good stuff, too.”
- On incorporating Kane into the lineup, “they were good 5-on-5 for the most part, but the PP obviously hurt us. Just trying to be too pretty and too many passes, there is good skill, good talent and they had some good plays, but bottom line is you gotta put the puck in the net and we didn’t do that tonight. You sort of expect it to be a little bit, we’ll see where it goes.”
- Did you see some things with Kane, Panarin and Trocheck, “there was some good stuff, definitely. Panarin and him had some chemistry right away and made some real good plays, but the bottom line is that when you play a game of hockey for 60 minutes, you gotta do more stuff than just make the real nice passes, we gotta reset some pucks, gotta get better forechecking and more pressure. There was good chemistry and they made some good plays, but our team has to be better than that, gotta play more below the goal line and do some stuff like that because it was too wide open.”
- On the defense and defending in front of the net, “it looked like we were tired back there with the 4-5, but that wasn’t the case, I don’t think our low forwards did a good enough job to be totally honest with you, When you look at the goals, it wasn’t, you could say, well, that was 5 D and we could rotate them less, I don’t think that was the issue, I don’t think our low forward didn’t do a good job down low.”
- Could it take a couple of weeks for Kane like it has for Tarasenko, “You want everything to go perfect right away and it didn’t go perfect tonight. Again, a lot of good stuff, you know they are good hockey players and it’s going to come, but I think we tried to force too many passes and it looked…again, we were leading 3-2 in the third period and we let a couple of goals get away with bad coverage. There was some good…we’ll be fine.”
- What was it like having Kane out there, “it was great, he’s a character person, fun on the bench, he was talking to the guys on the bench, I think our team loves having him. Too bad it didn’t go well for us tonight, but he’s a great addition for our group.”
- Are you looking forward to things getting back to normal to a certain degree, “probably a weeks time or something like that when you get by all the trades and you’ve just got your team. Like I said, every team is going through it and you get different players going in and out of your lineup and trying to make everything work perfectly and it doesn’t work perfectly every time. In a week, two weeks time we’ll be saying…you look back and say that there was a lot of stuff happening.”
- Anything on Motte, “I don’t know nothing, just day-to-day as far as I know…I haven’t gotten a report.”
- On the hit, “it was a bad hit, it was the right call, obviously got him high.”
- Did you have any conversations with Kane about settling in, “no, not yet.”