May 8 postgame quotes: Carter, Richards

Jeff Carter, on the challenges of battling from behind:
That’s not what we want to do. We want to go out and play with the lead every time we go out there. We gave up a power play goal to start there. It seemed like it was a pretty good play by them. They were passing it around pretty good. For the last two goals, like I said, they were turnovers that ended up in our net, and that’s something we have to clean up.

Carter, on Game 3 for Anaheim being “their season”:
I wouldn’t say this was their season. You never know what can happen. But, yeah. We know what type of team they are. They’ve got a lot of veteran guys over there, guys that have been through it. We knew we were going to get their best effort, and they played a good game.

Carter, on the challenges of getting into an offensive rhythm early:
I didn’t think it was too bad. We had our chances. We were getting shots. We just weren’t getting bodies in front of him. He was seeing a lot.

Carter, on whether every game in the season series could have gone either way:
Pretty much. I don’t know for sure, but I’d like to think that they were all one-goal games – overtime, shootout, whatnot. That’s the type of hockey. We’ve got two good teams going at it.

Richards, on the Game 3 loss:
We just didn’t have our best effort, or our best performance, anyway. We were loose on some of our passes and just weren’t moving the puck crisp enough. They capitalized on their two power play goals, I think, and then a little bit of a breakdown there in the third. It’s one game. We have to learn from it and get better and match their desperation next game.

Richards, on what Los Angeles needs to improve for Game 4:
Just play better. We weren’t moving the puck well enough to get out of our zone, which created a lot of zone time. I guess when you do that, you don’t get a whole lot offensively because you’re spending all your energy playing in the D-zone. Just minor things. It’s nothing we haven’t corrected before. It’s obviously disappointing losing at home, but we just have to play better all around next game and come out with a better performance.

Richards, on whether home ice is not “what it’s cracked up to be”:
It should be. We’re comfortable here. It’s nice playing in front of your home fans. I mean, I’m not sure what happened, why we didn’t execute as well as we could’ve. Whatever it is, we’ll look at it and correct it and be better next game.

Richards, on the challenges in the first period:
We just turned too many pucks over in our own zone, which allowed them to play a lot in the offensive zone and made us spend a lot of energy in the D-zone instead of going and playing in the other end.

Richards, on the importance of Game 4 and maintaining home ice advantage:
You’ve got to win games at home if you’re going to have success in the playoffs. They played well tonight. Give them credit. We probably didn’t play as well as we needed to. They’re right back into it now, and we have to play better next game.

Richards, on the reason behind the turnovers:
I’m not really sure what it is. We just weren’t moving the puck crisply. They came at us hard. Give them some credit, too.