April 26 postgame quotes: Willie Mitchell

On what he liked about the defensive play:
I thought we broke pressure a little bit earlier, a little bit better earlier in the game. We established a forecheck, better with pucks. We had an early lead. When you have an early lead it’s easier to play. They know that on the other side, they’re trying to do the same thing. Fortunate enough tonight, we worked hard to get those.

On the team’s attention to detail:
I didn’t think they played their best game. I don’t think we did either, but we found a way to do enough to win. Like I said just advance the puck, forecheck, and threw pucks to the net and we were lucky enough to get a few early.

On using the momentum of the last two games for Game 6:
Just stay in the moment. We believe. This core group, we’ve done it a bunch of different ways over the years but we really haven’t done this. I think everyone is kind of using it as a little bit of motivation to try and claw back. It’s like looking up hill. You look at the top of the hill, all of the sudden it seems pretty daunting. But if you look just right in front of you, it’s more manageable. I think that’s what we’ve tried to do and we knew early on that we spotted them a couple games and we’re still in a real tough spot here. We’re going to have to bust our butts to win the next one and then play in a Game 7, which would be pretty cool. So we’re looking forward to doing some of the same things we did tonight.