Bryan Smolinski Quotations

Nothing bothers him, and that's pretty amazing, considering what he went through. And we noticed that from Day 1.

I don't think we were worried about the outcome. I think we had a plan in mind, it was to play hard, get some passion back in our game and then see where it takes us. Unfortunately, it was on the wrong side of this one.

He made some huge saves at key times. We couldn't finish and we couldn't raise our level. We knew they were going to play well. We did the same thing to them in Ottawa.

Hopefully we had an eye-opener in the last period there to really give the guys a boost. You have to work hard in this game and every team is not going to lay down for you, especially when you're at the top.

(Hasek) was the reason we won. It was really tough taking those penalties in the first seven minutes, but then we got one at the end and that might have taken the wind out of their sails.

We let it slip and it's hard to get a handle on exactly how it did slip. We got the first goal, and then going into the third 2-2 it's anyone's game. But you can't gamble. You have to play percentage hockey and do things right. We got a little lazy and they got the momentum.

We're trying for him and things didn't go his way. I know he's a couple of bad starts his last couple of games. He wants to play his best and I think we can see he's in a great frame of mind, it just wasn't his game.

We knew that if we hung around until the third period, that once we got a break we would open it up. They could have done the same thing to us.

We didn't get the second and third chances that we usually get, which is uncommon. It happens, but he is right, we do have to learn how to play those 1-0, 2-1, games. It'll come. We're halfway through the season and we've got a lot of learning to do, but eventually we're going to win.

Tonight it didn't matter who we played. Tonight we were going to beat them no matter who it was.

I've seen that before. A couple of years ago against Philadelphia he made that same move. He's got a couple of tricks in his bag and as long as he keeps bringing them out at the right time, we'll take them.

Ray Emery has been excellent for us since we came back from the Olympic break. He's established himself as the No. 1 goalie and he's had to work pretty hard to do that.

After Alfie left the game, you are always thinking about how he's feeling and you don't like to see a guy get hit that hard. In between periods, we knew that we had to get the lead for him. It didn't matter who scored, it was a great team effort. We didn't try to be individual about it.

Do you want to lose 5-1 or 3-2 in a tough game? Either way, it's a loss. We put them on their heels real quick, but they stormed back.

They played a fantastic road game. We kind of ad-libbed and got away from our game and you saw the result.

It seemed like they got better as the game went on. We had a lot of chances, but it just seemed like one of those games we weren't going to win.

They bring a great energy and keep everyone young and fresh. It can get monotonous if you have the same regime. It brings an intangible that might have been missing.

I know it was hard. I was watching the whole time and you never want to see a guy flop around like that.