Michael Peca Quotations

We're just trying to take lanes away and take away their speed in the neutral zone.

I don't know where the blame or responsibility lies. Somebody should be held accountable, without question. We're in a playoff race. What happens if we miss by one point?

From a guy who's had a knee-to-knee hit, I understand the reasoning of the officials, ... You have to protect the players. But I saw the replay, and in this case, I think it was an incorrect call.

He does what needs to be done. With Jason it's more about what needs to be done than what needs to be said.

He's got such a wit and sense of humor like no other. He says things that will cut you without being rude or obnoxious.

I think we, ultimately, felt we deserved the two points because we controlled the play of the game pretty much from start to finish.

I think Dwayne silenced a lot of critics with his performance. He made three great saves and gave us a chance to win.

Our success comes with skating and being aggressive.

It doesn't seem like we have the drive we had before the Christmas holiday.

I think Jason Smith is the best captain in the league by far,

I wasn't nervous at all. I just wanted to go out and have fun with it.

We can't expect to compete with the teams that are considered among the tops in our conference, the tops in our league, if we're going to come out with slow starts like we have been.

We needed to relax. It showed in our play.

The one thing you have to be careful with every time you look at a lineup and see that you are playing a team you should beat, is that sometimes you don't put in your best effort. But I think at this point in the season, we're prepared to play our best hockey night in and night out.

You haven't got time to suck on your thumb and think about things that didn't go your way.

We seemed to lose composure as the game went on.

We had a great team effort and Morrison really came up with two big saves at the end of the game to give us the two points we deserved.

We might say, as competitive players, that we'd love to get back at it right away. But if our bodies could speak for themselves they'd say give us six or seven days before you put us back into a game.

February has always been the toughest month I remember over my career. It's going to be important to go into the break on a high and that means getting our game in order at home.

There's no denying that I'd like to have more goals than I do. But having said that, I haven't hurt the team. I haven't been a liability. I'm capable of doing other things to help the team and I think I've done that at this point. Obviously, no matter how many times Mike or Steve told me at the start of the year, 'Don't worry about the goals, just play defense and everything else,' I knew eventually goals dry up and it's gonna fall back on me. But that's the expectations I place on myself also.

I've been full of confidence. I just needed one to go in for me. I'm still going to get my fair share of goals this year.

They are all superstars on their own teams, but when they come there they have to rely on each other and it is a team effort. Sometimes guys have to make sacrifices on ice time and roles and that is how this team will have success.

The way momentum shifts in the playoffs, it's a big goal because you can take the crowd out of it. It calms everything down and allows the younger guys to play with more ease. Despite them getting that goal back, it gave us that confidence at the start of the game that we were ready to go.

Scoring and points have become more important than winning hockey games. We've got to get it out of our game.

This is a team that's played us pretty tough this year. They're playing pretty good hockey. They're playing with a lot of pride and enthusiasm.

They're both very fast and dynamic teams. They can both be hard to handle when they really start coming at you.

It's a void that everybody thought we had and if this is us addressing it, which we all believe it is, maybe it'll give us a bit of a boost. He came up big for us in a couple of games in the conference final. He's a guy who wants the opportunity and thrives on the opportunity.

It was nice. It really wasn't necessary, but it was nice. That's an indication of what kind of man (Islanders owner) Charles (Wang) is and what kind of organization they are.

I want to show the guys I can be relied on. I've got a lot of pride in myself and my game.

I'm sure there will be a lot of everything at that meeting, such as our strategy moving forward. A lot of people may want questions answered, they may want to know what happened over the course of the last week, help them understand where things fell apart or didn't come together.

I know on the play I didn't stick my leg out, ... He was planted on his skates. I just tried to finish my check.

I haven't played a game in over a month, so I'd like to get a few more practices in. I'll come to the rink (Tuesday), skate, see how it is and evaluate it as every day goes by.

If he's going to run somebody, he's not going to run a fourth-line center. At best, it was a two-minute penalty.

For the most part, it is still a pretty light atmosphere around here. As games go on, if it stays tied or if we fall behind, we get a little tight. We have to rely on our ability, we have a great team in here, and just sometimes we don't believe it as much as we should.

You cannot win games in this league with spurts of effort, ... And we've got to get our act together coming out of the gate.