Ken Hitchcock Played Quotations

We?re going to take Randy right through to the end of the day here and see how he looks. He had a really good first game, which was most impressive. I like what he does. He?s very smart and the way the game?s being played right now you need people who are smart offensively and defensively. He?s done a great job.

We knew they were going to play games for us, but to switch locker rooms before we even played a game, we never even thought about that stuff. We had our 23 guys and we thought that was it, then bang, bang things change dramatically.

We were a team going very well for an extended period of time. In the last 10 days we have not played near as well as we are capable of.

We have players who played for the Phantoms last year who do a lot of things really well that are going to help us,

Oh, yeah. These kids are 20 years old and it's a lot to put on their plate right off the bat. This is a whole other level, and it took them a couple games to get into it. But Carter and Richards really played well (in Game 3).

But the game is still played on the ice. Having been in the same shoes as Tampa once before (winning a Cup in Dallas in 1999), you don't want to disrespect somebody who has won a championship. And they earned it and deserved it. They're the ones with the knowledge right now. We're all searching for that.

I don't think it's an issue now. They've played each other since so I don't believe it will be a problem.

When he's healthy, the way this game is played now, it's built for him. He's quick. He's smart. He's hard to get a handle on physically. He's a huge asset. It's not just him as a player, but he makes people around him better. He's a good teammate.

We made some really poor decisions and we gave up three or four odd man rushes. Even though we only gave up 15 shots, we played really poor defensively.

He was absolutely dominant, ... He controlled the tempo and played a wonderful hockey game. A lot of guys did.

I think we play better when we're desperate. The big question mark now is, can we answer the bell again a second time? We've played some games like that in our building and then we haven't come back with near the emotion or intensity. We have to play with the same sense of desperation or increase it for more minutes if we expect to win.

Over all, this was the best game they've played in the series. They were very tenacious and they caused us to make soft plays with the puck at inopportune times.

We played great yesterday (Saturday in a 4-3 loss to the Rangers), didn't get rewarded and came back and we had a flat start. They took advantage of our mistakes today.

We're breaking in a lot of kids who haven't played at this level.

We had to respond after what happened in Buffalo. We played better and we played the way we have to play to win.

We played a heck of a hockey game. We played about as well as we've played on the road all year. We fought, we clawed.

We played a heck of a hockey game. It could have gone either way. I thought we got better and better as the game went on. We did a lot of gritty, good things in the third period. We deserved at least a point, and maybe two.

There are a lot of new people playing there. You have people on the power play who haven't played there all year, and those things are going to happen. Hopefully in a couple weeks we'll be a lot better, but when you lose both your quarterbacks, you're going to have an adjustment phase.

We've played some good games for 45 or 50 minutes. Tonight we played 60 minutes.

We've played hard and we dominated at times, but we've made mistakes at critical times.

We've played with this back-against-the-wall mentality on the road. In order to beat Buffalo we're going to have to play with that mentality for every game.

We're disappointed. We played a great game. We deserved a better fate. It's the best game we've played in a month.

We think Jeff, he played 13 minutes the last couple games, we think he can play a little bit more.

We did a lot of better things; we played the same way for 60 minutes that we did for 45 minutes in Carolina. We played good. We fought really hard. Ottawa is a team that everyone talks about their speed, but to me it's about their competitiveness. Every board battle is critical.

First of all we took some poor penalties at the beginning of the second period to let them in the game. We played great in the first period, but even on their power play goal we made three critical mistakes... There are two things that really concern me right now. Against the good teams we lose the special teams game and when you can't kill a penalty, that's a big concern.

I've seen young guys who've played great and I've seen them absolutely overwhelmed. I've seen young players literally in the fetal position during a series because they're overwhelmed by the intensity and the emotion of what's going on. And I've seen guys raise their level.

The third period was tremendous. A lot of people played very, very well today.

This is the state were in right now. We played great yesterday and didn't get rewarded. We had a flat start to this game. Montreal took advantage and scored 5-on-3. They took advantage of our mistakes. We have to regroup. We have to get some healthy guys back in our lineup. We didn't play our best game today. We have some things we have to talk about in the next 48 hours.

That is probably one of the best periods of hockey we've played in this building.

It was a heck of a lesson. It's the best team we've played all year. You make puck errors down in the zone like we did, you're going to get schooled.

Once they got the lead, they were able to sit on it. I don't think we played with the emotional level that we have at times. A lot of that is New Jersey. They play a very methodical game and they take the emotion out of it.

I felt we were still tentative (early) and afraid to play a little bit. Once we got a little angry and got some emotion going, then we were able to go. We played physical.

He played on only about 50-60 percent energy and he was still an effective player.

He put a lot of pressure on himself last year when Carolina started making those changes. He just kept adding to the pile there and he put too much pressure on himself to try to do everything. He came here and after awhile he just played his game and was very, very effective for us.

The difference was we had a great start to the game and played very well, but when they got their power plays, it shifted the momentum back their way. We did a lot of things really well today. Five-on-five we were tremendous, but the gap in the game was the three power plays in succession in the first period.