Murray postgame quotes

Terry Murray’s postgame thoughts…

(on having the same feeling as last night…)
MURRAY: “A bad feeling. It’s a useless part of the game, the shootout, but the fans love it. For that, I like it, because the fans are excited. They’re standing up and waiting for the next shooter. It is good for the game, but boy, do I hate it.”

(on whether not getting two points felt a little tougher tonight…)
MURRAY: “Maybe a little bit. It’s a home game. You’ve outshot them two to one, we played pretty well. We had some quality scoring chances and, hey, their goaltender hasn’t play much in the last year, really, and he played well out there tonight. And they played a real slow-the-game, five guys back at their own blue line kind of a game, and took a lot of the emotion and speed out of the game. That was a good strategy by them. It was a good plan. Still, at the end of the day you feel like you should have won it because of the territorial edge. I want the players to move by the shootout though. I talked to them about that at the end of the game in the dressing room. It’s real important for them to know that we played well for two games against two real good teams, playoff teams. You’ve got to move through the shootout, come back, get on the ice and feel good about yourself.”

(on how he selects shootout players…)
MURRAY: “We practice it. We practice the shootout and we have a little contest and try to pick the guys out of the group. Jack has been a pretty consistent goal scorer in the shootouts, so we always take him as our No. 2 guy. Zeus, in the practice the other day, he came through with a pretty consistent effort on it, and he scored last night too. That part of it was pretty easy to decide. The third guy tonight was a little more difficult. We went through a bunch of guys last night and didn’t have any success with it. I figured, with Ryan Smyth having played with Raycroft in Colorado, he would know a little bit, have a little bit of an edge maybe, and he made a good stop on him.”

(on whether fatigue played a role tonight…)
MURRAY: “I don’t want to talk about it, if there is. It’s the way the NHL is. It’s the schedule, and you’ve got to play back-to-back games. I’m sure that there’s a little bit, when you have played and traveled the night before, and the other team is sitting in their hotel room watching the game on TV. There’s a little bit of an energy difference, but I could never tell that by the start of the game. We had an excellent first period, came out with the energy and the right attitude, a lot of plays at the net. At the end of the day, it was no part of the outcome of the game.”

(on whether it’s disappointing to not get two points against the shorthanded Canucks…)
MURRAY: “No. They’re NHL players. No, not at all. You adjust. When you have injuries, players step in and take advantage of their opportunities. You change your style a little bit, like they did, five guys back, really slow the game down, extra players on the ice every faceoff, TV timeout, seven guys, it delays it, takes the energy out, the emotion out of the game, takes the fans out of the game. It’s the right way to do it.”