March 16 postgame quotes: Arizona

Dave Tippett, on his team’s play:
I thought we competed hard. We need to make some plays or compete in areas where you win pucks and beat somebody to score in this game. We didn’t win enough puck battles or make a play that made a difference. That being said, there’s lots of try in our group. Our group tries hard and Smitty gave us a very strong game. That’s unfortunate that we couldn’t get the play made we needed to get it equalized.

Tippett, on whether he was happy with his team’s defensive effort:
We tried hard. We blocked a lot of shots, they had lots of try. Everybody has tries, it’s what you do after that. You’ve got to score goals in this league to win and we expect to play hard and we expect to defend well and we expect Smitty to play well in goal. We also expect to score goals and when you don’t, it’s frustrating.

Tippett, on how he is keeping his players motivated:
In our situation right now, I said it this morning, for all the players on our team, it doesn’t matter if they’re young or old, now is the time you’re either part of the solution moving forward or you’re part of the problem. This is our evaluation to figure out where everybody is.

Shane Doan, on whether he is frustrated with the lack of scoring:
Yeah, obviously we don’t have a lot of scoring. I think that’s pretty obvious. [Reporter: Are you encouraged by anything you’re doing to generate opportunities to score?] Yeah, we’re getting some decent opportunities and hopefully some people can start scoring, myself included. People that are supposed to score aren’t scoring and we don’t have a lot of scoring. That’s the situation we’re in.

Doan, on what was said during the intermissions:
Just get that next one and we’ll see if we can find the first one, we can get some momentum and get excited but we never found it. Quick made a couple nice on the power play where we had some good opportunities but didn’t bury it. Give him credit, he’s a good goalie.

Mike Smith, on whether he was surprised by Los Angeles’ play:
No, obviously everyone knew what was on the line for them and we were trying to play spoiler and it didn’t work out tonight.

Smith, on Andy Andreoff’s goal:
It was kind of a broken play through the neutral zone. It kind of got swatted around there a few times and ended up in our end. It ends up kind of backdoor and I don’t even think he meant to shoot it there. I think he fanned on it a little bit, but it gets through me and it’s the only one they need. So it’s obviously frustrating.