May 4 postgame quotes: Ken Hitchcock

On missed opportunities:
“I thought we really played well from five minutes gone in the second period all the way to the end, I thought we played well. You know you’re going to get that in the playoffs, we’ve just to come back and find a way to out-work the goalie. I thought we did a lot of good things. We created a lot of turnovers but we didn’t sustain the pressure. I think we got a lot of really good original shots, I’m not sure that we got as many secondary or third shots as we are going to need to out-work this guy.”

On what he’s telling his team:
“Get some rest and let’s go back at ‘em. I mean, we knew what we were in for. I’m sure they felt that they probably deserved Game Two, and we probably thought that we deserved Game Three. So the series is at where it is at. It’s probably accurate where it is at right now. It is a hell of a battle and it won’t be any different on Monday. There is not much difference between the two teams. Both goalies are on top of their game. Our guy was great again tonight. Their guy was a little bit better. For us, we have to find a way to take advantage, especially on the road. You’re not going to get very many games like this where you get this many quality chances on the road. We’re going to have to find a way to finish some of these off. I thought more than anything today we were unlucky. We were unlucky. We had a lot of chances – bang bang plays that went through them, went out the other side. I thought today, like there are sometimes when the goalie out-works you and he out-battles you, but today I think we were unlucky. We could’ve really scored a lot of goals, especially in the second period.”

On Justin Williams’ pokecheck to disrupt a St. Louis scoring chance in the third period:
“It’s hard to see from the bench down there. There just seemed to be a lot of no-brainers. We had a guy with a breakaway there at the end. I don’t know. They win games like we do on effort. They had a lot of second effort defensively that we got them hemmed in a little bit in the second half of the game, but they had a lot of good defensive effort. I thought their penalty killing kind of evaporated our last two power plays. We did a great job on the first two power plays, but the last two we got out-worked.”

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