Barry Trotz Quotations

We're in pretty elite company. I told the team that if we can do something special, go for it.

We know how to break down their strengths now. We just have to match them on special teams. Special teams were the difference. We're just going to get better as this series goes on. We've found out how to beat this team.

We have to get as many points as can right now. We have to get some separation. We have a lot of teams playing each other in the Western Conference. We are going to gain some ground on someone.

We have needed big goals in our last couple of games, and he has gotten them for us. He plays with a lot of energy. He is a feisty type of guy. You need all kinds of players to be successful as a team. He is part of a good mix.

We were trying to get guys open in front of the net and it just didn't happen. We didn't generate anything there. When you get a chance like that, you have to create havoc and make something happen.

I was really happy with Mike [Green]. Not only was he contributing offensively, but he was really making good plays, good decisions. Defensively, he was really strong. For a debut, I didn’t know how he would be just coming off a little bit of an injury. He was real strong. I’m glad he got through that. I think he’s looking forward to a good season now.

The team takes on the identity of its top payers… I don't want to take anything away from the Capitals offensively,

At the same time, preparation is important to playoff success.

We're going to be the best in the league at something. We're deep in anthem singers.

This was a surprise. But I tell our guys to expect the unexpected ... When you come to grips with how you have to beat a team, most of the time you are going to be very successful.

When we should shoot, we are passing, and when we should pass, we're shooting. We are a little bit out of whack there.

One of our goals is to have home-ice advantage. We're not going to look behind us. We've just got to look forward. These are playoff-type games, and we found a way to win.

I guess I thought that there might be more human element allowed. You know, where it (the penalty) occurred, whether it was near the puck, whether it had any effect on the play. But no, they're doing it the same way. That surprised me a little.

I didn't like the way we played our game. The second period killed us. A lot it was due to face-offs. It started there. Structurally, we didn't play intelligently and that bothered me. When you do that against a good team like Atlanta, they will tear you apart.

I can't really say a whole lot that you can print. Any time you give up three power-play goals in a game, your chances of winning aren't very good. We had a lot of guys who were taxed by all the penalties these last two games.

I don't think our key guys were strong tonight. Our key guys carry the team and they're going to have to be stronger for us to be successful. Our whole core group has to step up and do a better job.

I give our guys a lot of credit. They battled back to tie it up and took it to overtime to get a point there.

He made a great pass on ( Scott Walker 's) goal (last Sunday). That's what experience brings. He sees the game at a little slower pace than some of the young guys.

We just have to do that in San Jose.

He's a great player. He's got great hands and he's got speed. He wants the puck all the time. He got three goals and he will be in the Hall of Fame if keeps scoring like that in the National Hockey League, there's no question. But we never got a piece of him all night and we have to set that stage that way and we didn't. He got the hat trick and he deserved it.

He's a real professional that's a good human being and helps as a great teammate. When you encompass all those things, he's a real quality player but more so quality person.

He's just got to work his way back in and he's a dangerous player for us. He'll have a big impact as the series goes on.

He was really good in key areas of the game. He was equal to the task. And it didn't surprise me.

I thought we were real sloppy in our clears and our passes and not real sharp. ... Just chalk it up to 12 games in 20 nights. Guys are trying to get a little rest, and mentally they're not sharp.

I thought both teams did a great job of respecting the rules.

I thought we gave them way too much room. There is a fine line between respect and giving them too much respect. We were giving them a zone to create some speed.

I thought the power play and the goaltending were key for us. Mentally, we weren't as focused as we should be.

I thought our whole roster played well. That's how you win in this league. You need 20 guys to contribute. We played a real smart game in terms of puck management. We did a real solid job with the puck. We had no blind or hope passes. I think we managed the game well.

I think it was a combination of things. The Blues were deeper than we were and maybe a little tougher, and their power play was unbelievable. But in the last 18 months, the climate's changed a little bit.

It is hard, even as a coach, to say who's going to win it. There's so many teams that are a lot closer than you think. The point totals, disregard them. It's what teams are playing well, what teams aren't.

Our primary objective is that Jiri is taken care of.

Our power play is effective in getting chances, but not that effective in scoring goals. Edmonton is looking to shoot on the power play. They attack the net until they are successful. We are working very hard on our power play, but it is feast or famine for us.

Parker came over the glass, and your first reaction is one of disbelief. Witt turns around, and his first reaction is to swing back. I don't like that trade-off. ... Parker is a marginal player for San Jose, and Witt is really starting to do some good things for us.

Paul took four penalties. I was ready to strangle him.

Paul does not feel pressure. He keeps his emotions in check. He thinks and prepares for the game very intelligently. It was a storybook ending with him winning the shootout against his old team.

I think people probably sell him a little short on that end of the ice. He's got good skills, and he likes to jump up in the play. I could certainly see him on a second power-play unit.

I think he could be a breakout player.

I thought it was pretty quick. I was sitting up there with a lot of the staff and I told them I didn't remember it being this fast before. Maybe it is because we have been locked out. But I remember back in 1998, it wasn't that fast.

I thought Mike played really well, especially when we had some good chances. When they got the lead in the second period, he came up with a few big saves. Then early in the third, he had some big saves, especially on the 5-on-3 that we weren't able to capitalize on.

I thought Mason played great and made some key saves. Not too many guys can win three games in a week and score a goal.

That was the turning point. That was a big save.

That was a good way to come into the playoffs I think. I think Paul always prepares himself for whatever he does. If that's an indication of how he's going to play in the playoffs, he stands a good chance to have a big impact.

That was probably a really big momentum swing, because we had just tied the game and fought back. If they score that goal and it lasts, that could have killed a lot of momentum. And it got called off, which was the right call because the net was off.

I was more concerned about how we came out, our attitude and our preparation following the break. And I was happy with all of those aspects. I think every element of our game was showcased tonight.

We put him in areas where his assets would shine, and he did a really good job.

We executed really well and took parts of their game away and established parts of our game tonight. You need a lot of different parts working together if you want to be successful.

We dug ourselves such a big hole early on. I always say that mentally and physically, you have a bank account as a team, and we had to go to the bank account real early. At the end of the season, we overdrew in some areas. When you dig yourself in a hole, it's tough to get out of. Hopefully what you saw in the 55 to 57 games in the middle stretch is more of what you'll see from the Predators. We're going to have to be more resilient.

We had zero fights in our first seven games. We made up for that tonight.

We had it and lost it and had it. I almost had a heart attack.

You make one mistake, and they have you on death row.

We didn't have our stopper in there unfortunately, but that's the way it goes.

We used all four lines. I thought if we would have went to overtime it would have really benefited us, but it never got there.

We've danced with the devil a little bit in terms of chances, and it sort of came back and burnt us tonight.

To me, that's a little bit of a slap in the face. I think we're a pretty good hockey team. ... The only thing we need to do is prove it on the ice.

Those 48 shots were realistic shots. We drove through the middle as much as we could. We created outside lanes. We shot the puck a lot. If you throw the puck at the net you have a good chance of it going in.

We had a couple of big saves from Chris Mason in the third. We had bang-bang goals in the second period and Hartnell came up with the big goal at the end. It was a key goal for us. They sort of had us on our heels, they were coming hard, but we were able to get the big goal tonight when we needed it.

Today, we were oil and water. We didn't mix very well. We had guys with a little bit of anger.

Tomas, talk about a gold medal performance. That was a gold medal performance.

Tomas is a great goaltender, but he just doesn't get enough respect around the league. He's one of the great stories we have. To see where he's come from to where he is now is wonderful. When you are coaching, those are the stories that you love. Because he wasn't in great shape, his attitude was off center a little bit, but now he's the hardest working, most fit, most professional guy. And he's still young.

Witt played against Joe Thornton a lot in Washington, and we've got a physical guy in (Shea) Weber. I think our defense is definitely better suited than it was at the start of the year. Having Joe Thornton go against the defense we started the year with might have been a little mismatch.

We frustrated them, and they took a lot of poor penalties. We knew their game plan. They wanted to bang, have a lot of energy and come out and prove a point. There wasn't much of a point at the end.

We spent a little too much time in our own zone. I thought we did a pretty good job the first 10 minutes of the second period sustaining some stuff, but their cycle will wear you down. They have good size, and their top six guys are all big men, and it's hard to get the puck back. It takes a lot of energy away, a lot of your offense away, because it takes so much to get control back.

We scored early and we were very fortunate when they countered and tied the game up. We responded right away.

Vancouver lost two defensemen for probably a week to 10 days in that tournament, which doesn't bode well for them.

Better walking than lying down in a hospital bed any day.

Every game has been a one-goal game and a nail-biter, if you will, but we'll take it. They don't ask how, just how many.

Early in the year we were getting a lot of grief from people, saying you're playing some teams that aren't quite as strong. But they were strong teams, we just sort of got their number early.

There's no way we should've gotten a point tonight and we did.

I wanted a sense of desperation going into the third period. Our resilience was not acceptable. I was more disappointed in that than anything else.

The moons didn't line up that way ... That's neither here nor there.

Defensively, we were real good. We had inside position. We battled one-on-one. We limited their chances.

As a home-ice team, you want the crowd and the energy in the building. We weren't able to capitalize on our special teams, but if we get one in, maybe it would be a different story.

A little bit of a turning point is that they scored 17 seconds after we got a 2-0 lead.

This group wants to get better. That's a sign of maturity. But we have to keep everything in perspective. We have to retain our work ethic and work on our speed and structure.

They threw a lot of rubber at us. The 21 shots in the first period were embarrassing.

They're winning our trust because they're getting the job done.

A lot of credit goes to our penalty killers. Your best penalty killer is your goaltender and he was great again tonight.

There were a couple of times I thought they could've changed the course of my situation. But they've worked through it with us and I think that's made us a better organization.

They really stepped it up. This was like the last day of school. Everyone is looking at the clock and it's 2:55. But we were able to maintain our focus.

It was our energy and bang line that was out there. They are supposed to generate energy and they didn't do that.

It's a fun time. You come to the rink with something on the line every night.

It's a real good opportunity for him and our team to make a statement that, 'Hey, we're more than one player,' and I think people tend to forget about that.

It's good for our team to be able to come into Detroit and play like that against an extremely good team. I can remember the first and second - and even the third and fourth - years of this franchise, we really had no belief that we could come in here and win.

It sort of validated what we've been trying to do for a long time. And hopefully it allows us to turn the corner and take the next step. That next step being making the playoffs consistently and being a threat for the Stanley Cup every year.

It was a good call. Scott Hartnell threw his stick. It's taken out of his own hands, he's out of control of it.

It was a bang-bang type of thing. We did a good job when we went down 2-0 with Walker's goal. We hung our heads a little bit when they scored their next three goals.

They believed they were going to come back, and we were sloppy.

They cycle well against anybody. You look at their top six forwards, they're big men. They can wear you down. It's hard to get it back once they start cycling. It takes a lot of energy to get the puck back sometimes. It takes away a lot of your offense.

They were probably just sending out their business cards for the year.

Things came to us real easy in the first period. It is a little bit of human nature to let your foot off the gas a bit after a start like that. When a game is so easy at the start it is a hard game to play.

Not relying on someone else to do it is the most satisfying part I think. We just got it done ourselves tonight.

That's a spooky thing. It's just one of those quirky stats and I can't explain it.

Their fourth goal really sank us. We had a lot of chances, especially early, but we didn't capitalize.

I learned a lot about our character. We didn't back off. We didn't get off to the start we wanted. In the first period ... we took some undisciplined penalties and we didn't skate. But in the second and third periods we did skate and we played the way we have been playing and it showed in the final result.

I'm truly honored to be a part of the Portland Pirates Hall of Fame.

In Tennessee, it's a non-traditional sport. The casual fans are coming and saying, 'You know what? I've never had so much fun at a sporting event.' And now they're coming back. That's how you build a base for any sport. That's how you get fans to come to the games - they've got to have a good time.

I just said to the guys, 'When certain things end you've got to get back on the horse and start all over again. That's over with, that's a nice chapter. Let's do something now through the next 73 games. The next 73 games are as important as the first nine.

I never thought of taking Tomas out of the game. He needed to work through this in terms of conditioning. Tomas didn't see three of the goals they scored because our defensemen were screening him. We created the traffic in front of Tomas.

His game shot up to a higher level. He started slowly, but he built up until he got hurt. I'm hoping he can start the year like he finished it when he was still healthy, and maybe even take it to the next level.

Chris did a real good job of preparing himself. That is a tribute to his work ethic. It is very difficult to not play for such a long time and then come in and be as sharp as he was. Things don't happen in practice the same way they happen in games. It was really important for our guys to play well in front of him.