On whether increasing the five-on-five scoring is the team’s top concern:
“I’d say, yeah. One goal’s not going to do it. Plain and simple. Scorers got to score. Got to play better. Got to create more offense. We’re not going to win every game one-nothing. What did Sutter say – three-two league? It’s been two-one lately, because we haven’t gotten any goals.”
On the line adjustments, and what Kyle Clifford would bring to his line:
“It is what it is right now. We’re obviously starved for goals, and there’s a reason for that. Not enough net pressure, not enough traffic, not enough rebounds, not enough going to the net with a purpose. Kyle brings all of those, and if we are to play together tomorrow, we’re going to need to do that to get results.”
On forgetting about missed calls such as the whistle that negated Dustin Penner’s goal:
“Even in playoffs, it’s tough to have things roll off your back. But that’s what you have to do. You can’t play playoffs as ‘what-if?’ It’s simply something you can’t do. At the time, we were getting outplayed. Would that have been a big goal for us? Yeah, it would’ve been a big goal for us. But, hey, we look at the big picture, and they played better for longer stretches of time than we did.”
On how to fix defensive zone breakouts:
“I think early, especially, San Jose’s D are pinching quite a bit, not allowing us to come out of our zone clean. So maybe it’s not going to be as clean as we want. Maybe it’s not going to be tape-to-tape. Maybe it’s going to be chips, and that’s what we’re going to have to do to get out of our zone. Clean doesn’t necessarily mean tape-to-tape-to-tape. Clean means in-and-out of your zone quickly.”
On whether he was surprised to see Kyle Clifford on the “top line”:
“There’s really no top lines right now. Whoever’s going to go is obviously going to play more, and whoever’s playing a hard game and making it hard on them is probably going to play more. The top line, fourth line, third line, second line – it doesn’t really matter at this point. One goal is not going to win us many games. That needs to be a big focus.
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