Mitchell, Murray discuss Voynov’s debut

Slava Voynov made his NHL debut last night and had a plus-2 rating in 19 minutes, 48 seconds, of ice time. How did he do? His defensive partner, Willie Mitchell, and coach Terry Murray shared their thoughts on Voynov’s debut…

MITCHELL: “I thought he was excellent, pretty composed, moved the puck really well for his first NHL game. I was asking him earlier in the day, and I said, `Oh, your first NHL game, will your family watch?’ He said, `Oh, I don’t know.’ And I knew when he said that, he was going to be fine, because it just tells you how calm he is. Slava is a really good player. His day, obviously, is going to come in the NHL. Obviously we had an injury to get him in the lineup, but it’s only a matter of time before he plays full-time and does well. He moves the puck well. Pretty agile. I kind of heard, before he came here, that the defensive side of his game was his knock, but I played with him in preseason and I really enjoyed playing with him.

“I felt like he had pretty good reads out there. He was an easy guy to read off of. Last night was the same. I liked his game and he’s only going to get better as he gets more comfortable and stuff like that. He’s a guy who wants to improve every day, too. You can tell that, you can see that. He’s always asking me, `What’s this? What’s this? What’s that?’ He seems really respectful of the game and guys who play the game, and those are the guys you want to see succeed, guys like that.

“He’s Russian, but last night I made a play behind the net, and I was probably going to move the puck and I heard him yell, `Mitchy, Mitchy, time.’ I said, `Hey, that’s when you know you’ve got a good player. A Russian is yelling English at you,’ telling me that I had time. You don’t see that a lot out there. The fact that he talks out on the ice, that’s huge for a defenseman. It’s the guy without the puck, a lot of times, who makes the play for the guy with the puck, letting him know he’s got time or whatever. When you’ve got a guy doing that, it helps you out. He’s going to keep improving and it’s going to be fun.’’

Question: And I’m sure it helps him having you as a partner, a veteran presence…

MITCHELL: “That’s my job. I know why I’m with him. I was fortunate enough to be able to get some ice time with him in the preseason, because of Dewey’s contract situation. That’s probably been pretty nice, for me and for himself and for the coaching staff, to be able to slide us right back together because we had some consistency in the preseason. They played me with him in every game I think, except one, and that kind of allows both of us to transition a little bit easier. When you’re playing with a younger player, you’re a little bit more cautious, you’re trying to help him out and be aware of everything on the ice but, at the same time, he’s played enough hockey and he’s a good enough hockey player that I kind of trust him out there to make the right plays. That made it really easy.’’

And here are Murray’s thoughts…

MURRAY: “He did a very good job, especially with the puck. There’s work to be done, no question about that. There are some reads that we will bring some attention to, on the checking part of the game in the D zone, but overall the marks are pretty good.’’