John Tortorella Good Quotations

We're playing a pretty good hockey team and Ottawa deserves credit. I've never seen a team that is so opportunistic. You make a mistake and they make it end up in the net. They make you pay. If we're going to win this game, we have to be at our best.

We have a short time left in our season. At times you have to have amnesia and for a good part of this game we will, but there are some things to learn from it and now we'll just get ready for Montreal.

We have a pretty good idea of who is going to be staying with us.

We're good as far as our mindset, but Ottawa turned it up a notch. So we have to eat it and try to get better. There's no sense of dwelling over it.

Sean has played well at a very important time of year. Johnny will get a start. If we can get the two of them going, it's a good problem to have.

Maybe tonight was a little bit of a let down. But I thought we showed enough energy to get ourselves back in it and then we had a good third period.

I thought we took some inopportune times to take some penalties, but I saw a lot of good things from our club. Now we'll get on the plane, and do it again tomorrow.

I was worried about that. It has happened quite a bit. We have done a lot of good things in all parts of our game except put the puck in the back of the net. You could feel the same thing. But we made a step in the right direction. We didn't wait for something bad to happen.

Remember Good is the Enemy of Great? This year, we need to say that Great is the Enemy of Excellent.

That's a tough one, I thought that we played well right on through. I thought that we played a good second half of the third period. We'll rebound and they should feel good about the way that they played, as it was our seventh game in eleven nights against a quality team and we just have to stay positive.

We played more of the way we need to play. And it's the way we will need to play if we're going to become a good team.

We had some great opportunities. In the first half of that game, I thought we had some good opportunities. I think that's the key of the game. Both teams had some opportunities, they scored on a couple, we didn't.

We'll just continue to plow away. And maybe some good things will happen.

To me, that's the really good thing here. It's the mentality of the team: they just keep on going. ... We're having problems finishing our chances, but it's not getting anybody down. We just try to keep on going.

This team should feel like we can play in these games. They've played in enough important games and they should feel good about themselves when they enter them.

We just froze. Atlanta has some good offensive people and we couldn't change the momentum. The way we played the last two periods, we're fortunate to get two points.

First off, we're happy with the six that are playing; we feel we have six really good defensemen. (But) I think we need more depth there.

I've already made that decision, he's not going to play all the games this year. We felt this is a really quick hockey team. It was a good time to get a different look.

Ryan Craig has shown us that he can kill penalties, and he has scored a couple of goals. He's good around the net. He's able to do the little things around the wall. He can play center. So he brings a lot of different things to us.

No, we'll rebound. They should feel good about how they played. It's our seventh game in 11 nights against a quality team and we've got to just find positives as we go through here and there are plenty of them tonight.

They know it's costing us. I go back to the people we have, eventually that thing has to turn around. I just believe that because we have good players. Right now, we lack so much confidence when we're up a man it's almost like we're waiting that something bad is going to happen to us when we get on the power play.

It's not a fighter. It's not a tough guy. It's not an idiot. It's a guy who is willing to bring a presence and in certain situations step up and stick up for his teammates and create room. But he also has to be a good player to play within a lineup.

Not good enough. Our key guys didn't produce. Bottom line.

That's an important goal because I thought we stunk in the first period. I think we watched them, we lost a lot of battles, we really turned the puck over. ... That's a good goal to get going into the second period.

I hope we can do it ourselves. We will. I just think we have good people on this club.

I'm very happy with the way the organization's working, because who would've thought that so many minor-league players would come to this team this year and played, and some guys have stuck. I think our organization, how it's working, is a good thing.

I really felt we came out hard, had a couple of good shifts; score a goal and we come right back and have a couple more chances. I complain a lot about our goaltending but also we have to have the responsibility to score that second goal to keep the momentum.

I felt we did some really good things. I thought our counters were good tonight. We end up with 18 scoring chances to 10 (for Montreal). We can't have four goals go in our net on 10 chances. Especially the fourth goal.

I don't think they are in our heads, I don't think that at all. I just think they are a pretty good hockey club and they've had their way with us a little bit here, and this gives us an opportunity to change the tide here.

The key to the game was, I thought our power play was very good early, and Theodore was better. He made some great saves. Later on, I thought our power play struggled and you know it's going to come back and bite you, sooner or later.

This is a good hockey team. We get in, if we get in, we're going to be a dangerous hockey team.