Michel Therrien Guys Quotations

For guys like him, it's tough. He's in and out of the lineup. We want him to be aggressive, we want him to create some offense. But at the same time, I understand that he's playing on the fourth line, so the quality of his ice time is not the same as guys on the top three lines.

It's nice to get a reward, seeing your team like we have been seeing here. They have been playing pretty hard, but they never get rewarded. Finally, tonight, there were a lot of guys who had a great game. It was a good team effort. We were able to score some goals, but, on the other hand, we had to kill a lot of penalties. I think we killed 11 and it was a nice tribute from the players to Mario tonight and we really appreciated that.

Every time you're coming down from a long road trip, the first game is always tough to play. We knew we were playing against a quality team. I thought our work ethic was there, so that's a good sign. Physically, we didn't back down. They were physical, and we were physical. But they have experienced players, and we have a lot of young players. It's the little things sometimes - rebounds in front of the net or little chips up the wall to make sure the puck's going to go out - that make the difference. But our guys really worked hard tonight.

We found a way. That's a good thing, especially after the way we played at home. I think guys have a lot of things to prove to themselves and their teammates. We needed a strong game, and we got a strong game.

Most of the penalties, they were not even scoring chances. Sometimes they were close to 200 feet away from our net. Those are bad penalties. We're going to have to be smarter. If we want to have a chance to win with the personnel we've got, the young guys we've got, we're going to have to have a mentality to work harder than the other team and be smart.