Murray postgame quotes (Dec. 3)

Terry Murray’s postgame thoughts…

(on the Stoll non-call, and the game…)
MURRAY: “There’s a compete off a faceoff. I didn’t get a good enough look to know. There were a lot of people around in that look. That was not the game. There were a lot of opportunities in the first period, with the power plays we had, the 5-on-3. Those are missed opportunities, obviously. That’s unfortunate, that we didn’t score on it. We didn’t get a lot of traffic at the net. Price saw a lot of those pucks. We needed to be more diligent in front of the net, to get screens on the goalie. And I thought we backed off in the second period. I didn’t think the intensity was the same as what it was in the first period, and then you get into the third and it’s a 2-1 game and you’re trying to get things turned around but end up with, I think, six or seven shots in the period, only. We left it too late, and then on top of that, you take a bad penalty when you’re on the power play late in the third. It’s a formula for losing games.’’

(on his message during the second-period timeout…)
MURRAY: “I thought our intensity with the puck, on the puck, was not good enough. Some of the pucks that we were putting into the offensive zone on that power play, they were recovering. The goalie was getting the puck. He recovered one himself. I felt that the pucks that were along the boards, we were leaving the player by himself. You’ve got to have two, three on the puck to recover, and then you go to positions. We were backed off on that kind of intensity, and it had to get picked up. That was the reason for the timeout.’’

(on a lack of scoring from defensemen…)
MURRAY: “I think your back end has to be a big contributor on the offensive part of the game. You see Florida the other night, they have 62 points from their back-end group. That’s a lot of points. That’s what we rely on, both Jack and Doughty, they need to start shooting the puck. Right at the end of the game, you see we win the faceoff and it comes to Drew in the middle of the blue line. He has an opportunity to shoot the puck, and he holds onto it and drags it down to the left side, and now the time runs out and the game is over. You’ve got to pound the puck away. You’ve got to get a lot more to the net, and that’s the reason, I think, part of the time whenever we end up with six shots in a period. The low-to-high is what’s open. Most of the time, in the game today, everybody is protecting with that home-plate attitude, and your back-end guys are the guys that have to start bringing the puck more consistently.’’

(on Jonathan Bernier’s game…)
MURRAY: “He made some stops here in the game. I thought his game was pretty good. It’s a long time between games, and it’s a little bit hard to get into the rhythm of the game, I know. But that’s just the way it is, with Quick playing as well as he has. When he gets his opportunity, he’s got to bring the effort that he did today.’’