Brown recaps game, season, looks ahead

Dustin Brown, on what it meant to earn a victory to end the season:
I think it’s never a game you want to play in. But if you’re in that situation, you want to, as competitors, win a game like that. It means nothing in the standings, but it means a lot for the room.

Brown, on whether there was a different feeling about the regular season:
You look at the records or the wins or whatever, they might be the same. I think the one thing for me was different was our ability to lock up third period leads. We were really, really good at that in years past. This year, I don’t know what the number is, but just off the top of my head it feels like we gave a lot more of those wins away and that’s the difference in playoffs for us, I think. I don’t know what the stat is. I’m sure you guys could find it out.

Brown, on whether the team was able to “exhale” after the game:
It’s one of those things like, I speak for myself and I’m sure a few other guys in this room or a lot of the other guys in this room, is a lot of us hate losing more than we like winning. That’s what makes us successful, but that’s what makes this very hard for a lot of guys. Again, it’s about our own expectation, our inner competitiveness and wanting to win at the end of the day. When you don’t, when you’ve gone through what we’ve gone through and we’ve become the team we’ve become, losing is even more hard.

Brown, on whether he’d like the roster to remain intact for next season:
I think that’s always the idea when you have a group of guys like we have. Ultimately there are going to be changes because there have to be changes – whether it’s salary cap or whatever it is. But again, it’s trying to keep the group as much together as possible. That’s what I think has made us successful in the past, is how Dean, management and coaches have had that continuity between year-to-year. If you look at my career in two halves – my first half we had a turnstile in here, personnel. Now the last five or six years, it’s been a pretty solidified group, and as a result we’re winning. I mean, this is not the result we want this year.

Rules for Blog Commenting

  • No profanity, slurs or other offensive language. Replacing letters with symbols does not turn expletives into non-expletives.
  • Personal attacks against other blog commenters, and/or blatant attempts to antagonize other comments, are not tolerated. Respectful disagreement is encouraged. Posts that continually express the same singular opinion will be deleted.
  • Comments that incite political, religious or similar debates will be deleted.
  • Please do not discuss, or post links to websites that illegally stream NHL games.
  • Posting under multiple user names is not allowed. Do not type in all caps. All violations are subject to comment deletion and/or banning of commenters, per the discretion of the blog administrator.

Repeated violations of the blog rules will result in site bans, commensurate with the nature and number of offenses.

Please flag any comments that violate the site rules for moderation. For immediate problems regarding problematic posts, please email zdooley@lakings.com.