May 6 postgame quotes: Dustin Brown

On Anze Kopitar ending his goal drought:
“Every player knows what it’s like to be in and gone through what Kopi did. It affects you [subconsciously]. You try not to think about it, but it’s always in the back of your mind. A credit to Kopi – with the struggle he had on the offensive side of the puck, he still has been our best defensive player, at least on the forward side, and that’s a tribute to his professionalism. I think he wanted to score for a lot quicker, but he didn’t allow it to affect the other part of his game, which was huge for our team.”

On the series’ physicality:
“Sometimes the physicality is not always about having those big hits. It’s about being hard on pucks, being first to pucks. I mean, you’re going to get the big hits, and you’re going to get the rub-outs, but it’s being hard on sticks, being under sticks. I mean, that’s going to wear on teams. We need to continue to do that, because they’re not going to sit there and not do it to us. We did good things at home, and now we have to translate that and get going on the road.”

On the team’s third period defensive efforts:
“I think we had good F3s. They didn’t have any odd-man rushes. I mean, they had one chance with about two, three minutes left where I think we reversed it right back into pressure, and it comes out front. That’s why we have Quickie in goal. So he made big saves for us. We got going there, and when we’re playing our system, we always have a guy back, and that always helps our D keep their gaps.”

On odd-man rushes bringing the team back into the game:
“Being down two-nothing, it was pretty uncharacteristic I think of their team to give up [odd-man rushes]. I mean, we played three games against them and haven’t had one odd-man rush, or maybe a handful. And then we get two within five, six minutes. I think it’s uncharacteristic of their team, and that’s what we need to do – when we get those opportunities, we need to capitalize on it, and we did.”

On gaining momentum within the game:
“It’s a game of emotion out there, and we got that lead, and you get your blood flowing and you’re jumping and I don’t know if you’re quicker, but you feel quicker, and that’s what momentum is. We had better sticks. We were starting to knock down a lot of pucks in the second half in the third, and we had a few chances off of turnovers, just because we had good sticks. Now we need to have that at the beginning of the game.”