Tom Renney Quotations | Page 2

We have to play fundamental, sound hockey, with him in or out of the lineup, quite frankly. And if we give ourselves a chance with whomever wears the colors to play five-on-five or better, we have a decent chance to win the game. Basically, we beat ourselves (in Game 1).

We have to keep looking at players over and over again because you can't hang someone out to dry if they're called for a penalty, with so many new rules to learn. One thing we are really looking for is players who can move the puck out of the zone quickly. Someone who keeps his feet moving and won't get called for any lazy penalties.

We had to do something different. It's not a case of buying a winner, it's building a winner. We're at the very front end of the process.

There are teams in the league and teams I've coached in the past for which the puck is inconsequential - we're not really built that way. We want the puck as much as we can. We want to make sure we are the ones taking care of it, not Pittsburgh.

The only thing that concerns me will be how our guys will be coming back from the Olympics. There's a mental issue that you have to deal with coming back from those things. These guys expend so much of themselves at this event. It's such a pinnacle at two-thirds of the way through the season. I don't know how that magnitude of an event is going to affect them. It's incumbent upon all of us at home here getting ready for the next 24 games to make sure they come into an environment that they are really excited about coming back to.

We talked about it as being a playoff-like game for us.

We just thought we'd show even more respect for our contingent that what we have. It's an international game.

We weren't intense enough. There was no real flow. We found a way to win and it wasn't pretty.

We were reactive, as opposed to proactive. We were always trying to respond. In the offensive zone, I thought we were the better team than they were. But off the attack, they were outstanding. They kept getting odd-man rushes.

He wants to play and he feels responsible for this team and where it's going. He wants to be the guy that leads them.