September 16 postgame quotes: Mike Stothers

On what he took from the loss to Arizona:
Well, you know what? I saw a lot of good things. I think if you watched our game from what we were trying to implement in the last few days, and we jammed a lot of information at them in a short amount of time, I thought they did a real good job and had a real conscious effort to try to apply what was asked of them and what’s going to be expected out of them. You know what? You take away the score, you look at what it is and where we’re going, I think there were a lot of positive signs.

On the third period push, and whether it was unfortunate to fall behind by two goals:
I thought we had a good push. I thought we came out with a real commitment to tie the game up, and you know what? It’s tough. When you’re playing from behind it’s not the ideal situation, but I thought we put forth a real good effort. Again, as I said, and I don’t want to repeat myself, I thought if you break it down, there were a lot of positive things, and we’re looking forward to tomorrow afternoon.

On Justin Auger:
Augie, he’s a big body. I mean, there’s no doubt about it. I think he’s been the last few days he’s been using his size to his advantage. You know, it’s hard to pick out guys because you don’t want to leave anybody else out, but I think he won some puck battles for us, he had some chances, he found himself in the slot, just missed the net there at the end of the second period. But for him to be effective, he needs to use that big frame, take pucks to the net and win wall battles, and I thought he did a real good job of that tonight.

On the five-on-three penalty kill:
We beared down on the faceoffs, we won some draws, and the guys were willing to get into the lanes. If we didn’t have to block it, we were preventing them from taking the shots, which is hard to do five-on-three. I thought the guys, they stayed composed. They played within the dots and kept the puck to the outside. We got some saves, which obviously you need to have on any penalty kill, but especially five-on-three. So it was pretty well executed, actually, for the length of time. It was quite a long five-on-three.

On the quick turnaround, and what he’d like to see built out of Tuesday’s game:
I just want to see us continue to build on what we’re trying to get accomplished here. There’ll be some lineup changes because we have some extra bodies. Pretty much the whole defense corps could come out – we’ve got that many defensemen – but we’ve got to first see about injuries and health, obviously. I think, talking to you, I’m pretty sure we’re OK. But, you know what? It’s two o’clock. There’s not much time to think about it, which might be better for us to just know that they’ve got to get up in the morning, get some food into ‘em, and we get to go right back at it.