Dave Tippett Earn Quotations

It's early and things will whittle themselves out. Players are competing for spots and minutes, and at the end of the day, the people who earn the spots are going to get it.

There's so much emphasis placed on the last time you did that, but we don't think about that at all. The regular season is to earn your spot and tell yourself whether you're good enough to compete in there or not, and we feel like we've earned that confidence.

We've got a great group of guys, great leaders who've focused on preparing for the playoffs. This is the time when you earn your stripes. We've put ourselves in good position; now we have to go prove it in the playoffs.

I'd like to go out and win by a big score. But I think these character-building games will help us down the line. The more you learn about your team in close games, the better you'll be down the stretch.

Our guys have earned the right to be a good team and a tight team. We've played pretty well together all year, so they have confidence they can get the job done.

You have to earn the right to be a good team. You have to earn it every day during the season.

We won't be successful in a playoff game like that. We'll take the win and learn from our mistakes. It's easy to whine and cry. But we'll whine and cry our way right out of the playoffs if we do that.

It's a feather in your cap. I don't think you should underestimate the regular season. For us, we had to earn our way to becoming a good team, and the regular season did that for us.