April 24 postgame quotes: San Jose

Joe Thornton, on what he liked from his team:
I don’t necessarily think the scoreboard did us justice. I think that we played a pretty solid game. I think they just got some more of the puck bounces tonight. We showed a lot of fight and we came down here and we did what we were supposed to do. Now we have to go home and do our job.

Thornton, on Los Angeles gaining momentum from their second period penalty kill:
I think so. The power play looked dangerous all night. We might have had three power plays, we probably should have scored on all three. It looked sharp. We didn’t score on that one. They came back and scored two, but it looked sharp. It was a positive thing for us tonight.

Thornton, on being concerned over giving Los Angeles some momentum:
No, no, no I thought we honestly played good enough to win tonight. Some weird bounces, but we played solid. Now we just go home and be in front of our fans and try to finish this thing off.

Thornton, on Joe Pavelski’s third period goal giving them some life:
Yeah, we had some good chances. I might have had an open net that just missed. Raffi might have had one at the very, very end. We had good looks, but hopefully we win the next game.

Joe Pavelski, on the elimination game being the hardest to win:
Yeah, it’s always a tough one to win. They’re desperate. They want to play. We came out a desperate team. We had our chances, we were on them. A breakdown here or there and they find a goal or two. We responded though. It was a game all the way through and they came out at the end.

Pavelski, on taking away some positives from the loss:
Yeah, we need another effort like that. Emotions were high, this series. It was a fun game. I think we all felt into it. Felt pretty good with the puck out there. We can probably be a little bit better in certain areas. We will look at film and try to learn something from that.

Pavelski, on the team’s physicality at the end of the game:
I think we knew that about a lot of guys in here. The team has got a lot of grit, a lot of fight. We want to win. We wanted to win tonight. It didn’t happen. We’ll rest up and come ready to play in [Game5]. We knew that about guys in here, but it’s definitely good to see.

Pavelski, on Dustin Brown moving to the line with Anze Kopitar and Marian Gaborik:
I don’t know. We played. I still felt we had some good chances.

Logan Couture, on the difference in the game:
They played in our end a little bit more up until the third there. They played well. We didn’t forecheck the first two periods the way we wanted to, but looking back on the game, we had chances. Tighten up a little in our D zone and score on a couple of our chances, the score could have been reversed. We’re still up 3-1. We have to go home and win a game at home.

Couture, on being satisfied with the team’s effort:
You’re never satisfied when you lose. We come to the rink every day and we want to win a game and we didn’t. So we’re disappointed and now we have to go home.

Couture, on putting the loss behind them:
We played well, but we also made a lot of mistakes. We’ll go over that, I’m sure, tomorrow. We know we need to be better to beat that team. We know that they were going to be desperate tonight. They were. The first two periods, they were better than we were. The third, we played better and hopefully start on time in Game 5.

Couture, on the fights at the end of the game:
I mean it’s hockey. They don’t like us. We don’t like them. It’s Game 4 of a series. We’ve seen them a lot over the past week. Certain players don’t like each other. That’s the way this game goes.

Couture, on the mindset for Game 5:
The emotions are there. They’ve been there all series. They were turned up a little bit at the end at the end there. Like I said, that’s hockey. Hockey is a physical game, a violent game at times and things like that happen. We’ll regroup and get ready for the next one.

Todd McLellan, on missed opportunities on the power play:
I think it affected the game. We had some open nets in that situation that we didn’t score on, but that happens sometimes. You have to regroup and be resilient after that. If we give up five, like we did tonight, we’re not winning against a team that can defend the way they do and have the goaltending that they do. We can talk about the ones we missed, but I’m more concerned about the ones we gave up.

McLellan, on the goals they gave up:
I didn’t like our net play, simple as that.

McLellan, on matching Los Angeles’ desperation:
I thought we had some intensity to our game. I thought we were as desperate as they were, but we didn’t execute anywhere near the where they did. When you go back to the goals, it’s quite easy to pinpoint some of the mistakes that we made. For us to have success moving forward, that has to get cleaned up quickly.

McLellan, on what he meant by ‘Net Play’:
When I say ‘Net Play’ I don’t mean our goaltender… I better make that real clear. I’m not talking about our goaltender. I’m talking about the goaltender, the D-men and the forwards down low and secondary chances we give up. I’m definitely not talking about one individual with pads on.