December 2 postgame quotes: St. Louis

Jay Bouwmeester, on the loss:
It’s the way it goes. You want to be pushing, you want to be creating and they’re a team that plays good defense and they don’t give up a lot of real good chances. When you do get them, you want to try and bury them and that doesn’t matter who you’re playing.

David Backes, on trying to overcome a three goal deficit:
To win them, the best key is to not have come from behind games. We spotted San Jose four and L.A. two tonight. Those teams are just too good to give them those sorts of leads and expect to have a magic switch turned that you’re all the sudden start pouring them into the net. We make it a one goal game tonight, but we could have done a lot better if we’d have started the right way and had that considerate effort for 60 minutes from everyone on the ice.

Kevin Shattenkirk, on losing to San Jose and Los Angles:
There’s challenges to every year. I think this is the first time we have lost two in a row. It’s a new challenge for us to overcome here. We just played two great teams, two teams that are going to be probably in the playoffs at the end of the year. We have to realize that our game isn’t there right now and it’s a learning experience if anything. I think we are still early enough in the season that we can grow and become a championship caliber team and that’s what we have to take away from this.

Ken Hitchcock, on losing back to back games:
I think we trend is we’ve had slow starts, both games. Outplayed significantly in the first period, out-competed, not ready for the tempo, so that’s our responsibilities as players and coaches. We have to get ready the tempo of the game. I thought we were- again we revved it up halfway through the hockey game and played like that. Because the score is 3-0 I don’t think you can judge the game by 3-0. Who knows how much they let their foot off the accelerator. So to me, it’s ready at the start, it’s ready to compete at the start, ready to fight for space and they took it to us.

Hitchcock, on the loss:
They force you, they’re a physical hard checking team. But we have to have a better reaction than what we did. We have to regroup when we get home and get ready to get going.