May 16 postgame quotes: San Jose

Todd McLellan, on the game:
“I liked our game. We’ll meet tomorrow at the rink and I’ll tell our team that. The thing I like about our team, maybe in the past this would have bothered our team more, but with the group of guys we have I think we can recover from this. I think we can get out and play hard again; we’ll take our chances just like we did tonight. There are a few areas we need to clean up but guys played their hearts out. But again, like I said after Game 1, that doesn’t get you wins in the playoffs, scoring more than the other team does and we’re going to have to do that.”

McLellan, on what he told his team after the game:
“I left them alone now. They’re tired of hearing from me. But tomorrow when we meet I’ll tell them the good things we did. We will talk about some of the adjustments we made and how it helped us. We’ll talk about things we need to clean up a little bit and the most important thing is they’ll know that we believe in them. It was a hell of an effort tonight from our group.”

McLellan, on Scott Gomez “playing a pretty good game”:
“And that’s an accurate assessment. Gomer’s been a very good player for us in a number of different ways. I don’t want to say it’s surprising, but he’s almost like a third or a fourth coach. He’s trying to do things the right way. He’s trying to get guys to keep their shifts short. He’s trying to make sure we have a high guy. He’s trying to make sure we don’t turn the pucks over. I didn’t know we were getting that in Scott Gomez, but we’ve got it and he’s been a big influence that way.”

McLellan, on whether Brad Stuart’s late penalty was a “good penalty” under the circumstances:
“It’s a scramble around the net. His stick goes to one side of the feet. There’s not trip that goes to the other side. It’s a matter of inches, and it’s a hockey play. There’s not much we can do about that.”

McLellan, on Raffi Torres’ suspension:
“Again, my comments right now are going to echo what I said earlier. It really doesn’t matter what Todd McLellan thinks or what everybody else thinks now, because it’s been dealt with, and we have Game 3 now that we’re going to move ahead and prepare for without Raffi. But Raffi has our full support. As a player that’s worked hard to change his game, do I think that was anywhere near any of the other hits that he’s had in his career? Absolutely not. You know where I stand with the rest of it.”

McLellan, on how he gets his team to “let the last minute go”:
“We’ve got to get back to San Jose, and we’ve got to wake up in the morning and feel good about what we did for 59 minutes. Obviously we don’t want to go down five-on-three against that power play. It’s a tough kill. But there’s a lot of good to take out of that game. We realized that the type of opponent we’re playing against, the caliber of it, and like a lot, dislike the fact that we lost, and that’s the bottom line.”

McLellan, on the specifics of San Jose’s performance that he liked:
“Yeah, we got to Jonathan Quick for three. They gave up three to St. Louis in one of the games. After that, it’s been goose eggs, one or two. So we got three, but when you get three, you better beat this team.”

Joe Thornton, on how long it will take to let go of the loss:
“Ten minutes. We played well. We just didn’t win. We thought we deserved a better fate but that’s playoff hockey. They did their job. They got two at home. Now we have to go home and do our job. You get in penalty trouble later on, it happens, but now we have to get the job done at home.

Thornton, on San Jose’s power play:
“Marleau’s goal was pretty much a power play. It’s getting close. We have to keep banging away, keep shooting; that’s pretty much all you can do.”

Joe Pavelski, on breaking through against Jonathan Quick in the loss:
“It’s a tough loss regardless; we know we can break through. We have done it before. We know we’re going to get our chances and we did and we could have had another one. It was just a tough way to lose it. We have to get rid of it quick and take a lot of good things out of it. We played them hard and we felt like we carried the pace for most of it. They are a good team, obviously, they found a way tonight. It’s tough to lose on a 5-on-3 so late and then give up another one quick. Take it in and move on. It will be nice to go home.”

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