His immediate reactions to the series victory:
“I guess relieved. It was an extremely tough, close, hard-hitting series, and I think a lot of guys have some bumps and bruises, and a couple days here before Anaheim gets to play, so we’ve got some time to recover. It’s a hard hockey team to play against over there. They grind it out, and we grind it out. It’s definitely a hard-nosed series.”
On constantly being on teams that win playoff series:
“I honestly don’t even know. I guess being a part of good teams, having good coaches, and just being fortunate enough, I guess, just to be put in the situation. L.A. had a good team before I came here, I think Philly before I went there, and down the line. So I think just the coaching part of it, I think is probably the first and foremost thing. I’ve been lucky to be a part of some good ones.”
On Dustin Penner’s goal with two-tenths of a second remaining in the second period:
“There was however many – 15guys on the bench yelling at him to shoot, and it sure seemed like he was taking his time with it. He had a good game. He had a great series. He stepped up his game in a big way and scored some big goals and made some big plays for us, and we probably wouldn’t have won the series without him.”
On whether he has ever seen a shot from that distance go in with such a small amount of time:
“Not off the top of my head, no. But I think it did go off their defense’s stick. Like I said after the last game…whoever gets the last bounce or break in the series is going to win, and fortunately it was us.”
On whether the team feels as if it is back to where it was last year regarding momentum:
“We’re confident. I don’t know if that answers your question. But I thnk we’re confident now. A year ago – I can’t compare it to what went on back then, because I barely remember it to be honest with you. We’re confident. We still have some work to do, I think. We played well enough to win the series. We can still get better, and that was our goal from day one this year, was to improve right through to the last day. So we have some work to do, and some time to get some bumps and bruises out of the way, and get some practices in.”
On whether he would prefer to play the Ducks or Sharks:
“I don’t know. I’m going to sit back and watch and see who we play. But both teams obviously have world class players on them and world class goaltenders, so it’s going to be tough either way.”
On remaining in California in the second round:
“Yeah, that’s a positive. No four hour flights, which will be nice.”
Rules for Blog Commenting
Repeated violations of the blog rules will result in site bans, commensurate with the nature and number of offenses.
Please flag any comments that violate the site rules for moderation. For immediate problems regarding problematic posts, please email zdooley@lakings.com.