Zenon Konopka Quotations

Max has been jumping (into the attack) all season long, especially late in the year, and hasn't been rewarded. Today was one of those days where he jumped into the play and was rewarded for it.

He's absolutely still part of the team. There's a lot of components to this team, and he's one of them. He's always there to talk to, and the way he's dealt with his adversity, everyone gets a little bit of energy from that.

Hockey is a weird game, and once you get that confidence, it just rolls and you roll with it. He's making great plays in the defensive zone, not just the offensive zone... We're going to ride him as long as we can.

We had a meeting before the game. We talked about what we would be doing if we weren't here.

We have to make sure we don't hurt the team by fighting. It has to be in the right context.

We had our chances, we just couldn't put the puck in the net tonight. No excuses. We (have) to play better to win.

We didn't play well enough defensively. We're a pretty good defensive hockey club, and when you give up five goals it's tough to win games.

We thought if we played our game, we kept on working we'd wear them down. It seemed like (Providence) kept on playing harder, but as the series went on they started getting worn down.

Without (Gillis') presence in the lineup, (opponents) might try to take liberties. But it is a team game, and we all want to contribute.

It's team toughness now, and we just don't have our heavyweight. We went from being the toughest team in the league to having to battle through it, I guess.

It's always bad to lose. Sometimes it takes you down a notch. We have to realize whatever team we play in the playoffs, if we don't show to play we will lose.

Not that there's anything wrong with that kind of work. We all do it. But we're hockey players. This is what we love to do, and we were in danger of not doing it anymore.

Smoking rooms. They smelled like smoke. But we don't let the little things like that affect us.

Every year in every sport a No. 1 team gets knocked off and gets upset. We got to realize if we don't show up to play we will lose, so we've got to be ready to roll.

He put a lot of things in perspective for us, and it really energized the guys in the first period. We came out with four goals (in the first period) and a strong effort, and that was directly affected by Jordan giving us a speech before the game.