Peter Laviolette met with the media following the win over Nashville and said (MSG):
- It looked like they paid whatever price they needed to get the job done, “I agree. You are down 2-0 in a game and it’s always tough to climb out of a hole when you’re on the road. The first didn’t go the way we wanted, the second, I just thought we played a much better period, we played faster, the PP looked sharper and our guys were more on point and competed hard and as the game went on it really became a competitive game, blocking shots, physical, 1-on-1 battles and I thought our guys did a really good job crawling back into the game and gutting one out.”
- On changing the forward lines, “Just watching the first period, I didn’t like it and we’ve had so much consistency in the lines and the way we rolled them over. To me it was a change of scenery for everybody, everybody got a new look, but the guys deserve so much credit for coming back and fighting back in that game and playing really hard.”
- What was the message after the first, “We just didn’t do enough things well. If there are 15 things you have to do to win a hockey game we probably got beat in all 15 and conversely, if we won the second period we could climb back into a hockey game and set it up for the third period. I thought amazing job by them coming back and fighting for something in the second and gutting it out in the third.”
- On Trouba’s goal, “It’s big because when you leave the room you are talking about winning the second period and you go up 1-0 before two minutes tick off the clock, that puts some life on the bench and some juice in the guys and now you are in it and fighting for that second period to win that to set it up for the third.”
- On Trocheck, “He really cranked it up, he played a great game. I really liked the line we put together, it was Trocheck and Brodzinski. They did a lot of good things, they were fast and on the forecheck in the offensive zone. They made some big plays.”
- On Trocheck lately, “I think it’s just because he’s a competitor. It’s not a dirty way, but he competes hard on everything and when you are constantly competing on pucks and challenging for pucks it brings out the best in everybody. He’s a warrior.”
- On the winner, “It was really good. Good offensive zone play, coming down on the flank with that play, people at the net, you never know what is going to happen. We talked about getting to that area more today, trying to get in there and find a goal that might hit something or redirect off of something. Our tip, off them, didn’t matter, just getting more people to that area to see if you can get one by them.”