December 10 postgame quotes: Mike Stothers

On the importance of the better start after last night:
We talked about the start. It’s nice to see us respond in the right way. It’s a lot easier to play when you have three than when you’re trailing by three. We gave ourselves a chance. We didn’t take penalties right off the bat like we did last night. You get behind and you’ve got to play catch-up and as excited as everybody was … about the game and the number of goals that were scored, it’s late and it’s exciting … but as a coach you look at it totally differently. It’s totally unnecessary. Again, we keep talking about details and you look at it and you go, we got three out of four points on the road in Tucson, that’s got to be pretty good? But we gave them three. Now, if we had to come home with four and they had nothing, yeah, that’s something to get excited about. I get it. I know how everybody works. As a fan you get pumped up and excited for games that are back and forth and lots of scoring but as a coach, it’s not how you win. We’re here to win a championship.

On Teddy Purcell’s play:
Teddy’s been really good. First of all, he’s come to us with a great attitude. He doesn’t seem to be ‘oh, woe is me’ and ‘I’m getting the short end of the stick from the organization.’ He’s embraced it. I think part of it is we have a bunch of good guys and the proximity and the fact that we spend a lot of time together through training camp and everybody does know each other. That makes it a little easier. It’s a little easier situation to come into. I don’t know how it’s going to play out. Right now he’s commuting back and forth. If that’s going to change, I don’t know. We’ll probably address it more after Christmas break.

On Adrian Kempe breaking his goal drought:
Actually, Merschy scored last night, twice, which was good. And Kempe scored tonight. Now we just gotta get that little ball of hate Backman to score and that would be the icing on the cake. That would be a Christmas present for us all. [Reporter: Have you seen an change in Kempe at all? He mentioned in his interview trying to play with more desperation.] It just means he’s listening, so that’s a good thing. But it can’t be just a sometimes thing. It has to be an all the time thing. If you look, I think there was a thing on Twitter where Sidney Crosby has like 17 goals or whatever and they had a graphic of where his goals have come from. It’s not from out, it’s in the dirty areas. All wrist shots, rebounds, that type of thing. So, it’s not long shots. He gets in there. He’s not the biggest guy. He’s not the toughest guy, but he’s probably the best guy. If you want to score, you’ve got to get into those dirty areas. So, hopefully, the goal that he scored tonight was usually where Michael Mersch makes his living. Get in there, poke at a rebound. Land on your belly. Keep poking until it goes in. Lay around in the blue paint. It will go in.

On both teams coming in after playing overtime games last night:
I don’t know how that worked out, who would be the more tired team. I know they’ve been on the road for what seems like a long time, a couple weeks. That really does start to wear on ya. Our schedule hasn’t been great but we try not to let it be an issue. We try to find the positive. We flew, as opposed to bus. It was an early morning. It was a late night, you get up early and you travel. It is, again, as we’ve talked about before, it’s different routine for the guys and they’re very much creatures of habit. They like everything to be just so every single day. Any little thing, that throws them off. I was happy with the way we came out and played but it might have been the fact that we didn’t allow ourselves to rest on our laurels. Again, three out of four points on the road. We were genuinely mad and disappointed that we didn’t get four and they got zero. [Reporter: Do you contribute that to the team’s resiliency?] Well, we keep battling, we have. We come from behind or we lose a couple and then we win a few. I guess that’s a step in the right direction. I think tonight was our 20th game. So, I’m hoping that some of these lessons that we’ve learned we’ll take into the next segment of games coming up. More importantly, the remainder of this week. Got a busy schedule Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday. And then a Christmas break, and then after that we come back with a flurry. So, yeah, it’s a tough week. We’ll practice Monday. We’ll have tomorrow off and then get back at it.

On whether Alex Lintuniemi, who has been out the last four games, is injured:
Yes. Lower-body. [Reporter: Is there a timeline for him?] You know what, I don’t know right now because he didn’t travel with us and to be honest with ya I didn’t even see Linti until after the game. I know he got lots of treatment and everything while we were gone. [Reporter: Was it in practice?] No, it was in the game. We’re hoping it’s not going to be too long. We’ve gotten through, we made it through these three games with six [defensemen], one of them being Biss. There’s a guy that’s more comfortable playing forward than he is playing defense. He’s done a pretty good job. When you break it all down, the six of them have done a pretty good job. If you think about it, if any one of them takes a penalty, like Biss gets into a fight tonight so you’re shortening your bench with an already tired group. It’s tough but there’s that resiliency we were referring to.

On whether Zach Trotman (upper-body) is getting closer to a return:
Yeah. I would say he’d be a long shot before Christmas but he should be pretty quick right after. The timing’s not great because just when he’s getting so close, we go on that break. He’s one of those guys that he’s just not really looking forward to the break because he’s had enough time off. He’s just climbing over walls to get back in the lineup. But, it will be good. He’s close.

On the team’s abundance of veterans and only being allowed to play five a game:
Well luckily for us, Trotman doesn’t fall into the veteran category for the American Hockey League. We are, at present, with six and you can only dress five. So that does present a bit of a challenge. You look at it, you’re going to have somebody who’s healthy enough to play but can’t play. The crazy part of the rule is you could actually be understaffed. You could have one or two guys under the limit and have a healthy body but you can’t play ’em because you’ve got your maximum amount of veterans. When Teddy came down, on one hand it’s a good thing for us because you’re getting a skilled hockey player, but now we’re at that veteran rule. It’s kind of awkward and uncomfortable for everybody. We’ll just deal with it as we go. Trots won’t effect that part of it, but he will add a little veteran presence to a pretty green back end. [Reporter: Is that why Scuderi’s come and go or is it a use-him-as-you-need-him scenario?] A little bit of both. It’s hard because on one hand you think it’s easy, you have six veterans and you just go, ‘oh, Biss.’ He’s the easy guy to sit out as your veteran guy but what you’ve got to think about is what does he bring to the team? First of all, he brings energy and he brings grit and toughness. Then you look at it and you take it a step further, he can play forward and defense, so he might be the most valuable one of them all. If you look at pure skill, again, you would say why is he playing or why is he [trails off]. You have no idea how valuable he is to the dressing room, to the guys, as a teammate, what he brings. They don’t make ’em like that anymore. He’s a throwback to the way hockey used to be played, when it was fun.

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