Jeff Halpern Time Quotations

If anything, it was more us than Thornton. We gave him too much respect and as a result he had room to operate. We can't give him that much time and space.

Before going into a break you want to feel good about yourself. When you got time off the worst thing that could happen is you lose a game. You have that much more time to think about it. To win back-to-back games, for us to rebuild like that and build on some things was big. Not being complacent after a win was big for us. We're trying to claw ourselves back to that .500 level.

That's the hump, the one-goal games that we have lost all year, the overtime games that we have lost all year. I think we've done good things at times just finding ways to win. Good teams find a way to win, and we are close. It's not quite there.

We had our share of chances on the power play as well and we didn't take advantage. We continued to give a lot of penalties up, but that's because we are spending a lot of time in our own end. That's something we have to crack down on.

Part of what we're trying to do is get pucks to the net and outwork teams along the boards, something we'd like to build on. But now pucks are just going to the net. Some of the time when we're getting a lot of those chances we're trying to get second and third opportunities. It's really just getting the bounces.

Anytime you come to play, you want to win, ... It's nice to walk away with a win. It's definitely not the same Pittsburgh Penguins we'll face in the regular season, but we did some good things that hopefully we can build off of.

It's definitely easier if you're in the playoffs. From that sense, this is a completely different mind-set from where you want to be. But at the same time there are a lot of guys here playing for jobs, playing for next year. At this point you're playing for pride and wanting to win as a group. But I admit we should be ashamed about some of the games we've played lately.