February 18 postgame quotes: Stothers, Sutter, Backman

Mike Stothers, on what the difference was in the game:
Speed. They’ve got a lot of speed. So, they exposed our lack of speed tonight. [Reporter: Do you feel like you normally have speed?] I feel that depending upon the situation and the lineup we have, sometimes we have speed. Tonight, our guys tried extremely hard but when you’re playing against as good a team as San Jose. They’re the best team in our division. They might be the best team in the league. I can’t fairly say that because I haven’t seen everybody, but pretty darn good. Most of their guys have been in the NHL at some point. It’s a good team. I thought our guys did as good as they possibly could in the situations that they were presented with.

Stothers, on a better start to the second period only deflated by San Jose’s second goal:
I look at it, we started the second and thought it was when I marked it down 15-something the clock, we had the puck in their end. They couldn’t get out of their end. Then Seto’s penalty kind of changed things again. Momentum. It’s all about momentum. We’ve got to capitalize on some of those power plays when we get them, too. So, we got a power play with 48 seconds left in the first period. Offensive zone faceoff, you lose the draw and you’re 200 feet. Then you come back and you get the puck and you come up the ice and you go offside. How do you explain that one? Change. Get another five guys out. Then we had the faceoff in the neutral zone, we lost that one. Where’d that puck end up? In our end, 200 feet away. Pretty much kills your power play.

Stothers, on Vincent LoVerde’s absence hurting the power play:
Let’s not stop there. I mean, we don’t have Teddy, we don’t have Merschy, we don’t have Vinny. I know I’m forgetting somebody. Kempe’s up top. LaDue’s up top. It’s a different look. It’s going to take some time for those guys that weren’t getting those minutes to get used to it. And the guys that do? Win a fricking draw. And you’ve got possession and you’ve got a chance to get something going to the net. So, but, that’s why we have practice Monday and Tuesday.

Stothers, on the Reign playing their third game in four nights and if fatigue played a factor:
San Jose got here at 4:30 in the morning from Stockton. We were at home last night. We were at home Wednesday. I am never going to use that as an excuse. You can write it. You can print it. You can exclaim it. You can put it across the ticker on a TV. I don’t care. That’s not an excuse, I’m never going to accept it.

Brett Sutter, on what the difference was overall:
Hard to win games when you don’t score any goals, first of all. Didn’t do a very good job at generating at even strength I didn’t think. Not enough chances and then our power play wasn’t very good either. Thought Soupy kept us in the game, I thought guys played hard, but at the end of the day hard to win games with no goals.

Sutter, on the Reign playing their third game in four days and if the team was trying to catch its legs:
No, I didn’t really feel that way. I thought we still pushed pretty hard. You trail early and then you kind of play catch-up the whole game. I thought guys were skating, working hard just couldn’t generate any offense.

Sutter, on what was missing on the power play and what impact there is with LoVerde out:
Yeah, I think we have a lot of guys out that are big parts of that power play but we’ve managed pretty well without ’em the last few weeks. You look at it, you miss Teddy, Vinny, Mersch, that’s three pretty good power play guys. I don’t think you use that as an excuse one bit. We’ve got guys here who can get the job done, but we weren’t clicking tonight. We weren’t clean with our entries and that sets up the whole shift for us and then we didn’t have many shots, many chances to the net, so yeah, just didn’t generate much.

Sean Backman, on what the difference was in the game:
We were chasing the puck way too much tonight. They had the puck a lot more than we did and it’s tough to win hockey games when you’re chasing and we did a lot of chasing tonight.

Backman, on whether fatigue was a factor:
No. No. We’re used to playing back-to-backs, mid-week games. So, I wouldn’t say fatigue was a factor. But yeah, they just had the puck a lot more than we did.

Backman, on whether being shut out was the result of Grosenick or lack of chances:
It’s about execution for us right now. Difference is we didn’t execute tonight where as Friday and Wednesday we were. We had our chances but they didn’t go in. It’s all about execution.

Backman, on how hard it’s been on the power play not having LoVerde in the lineup:
Vinny’s a great player. He’s our captain. We lean on him for a lot of minutes. I’d be lying to say we didn’t miss him. But still, other guys like myself, they’ve got to step up. Right now we have a lot of injuries that we’re dealing with so it’s guys like me that need to step up and do something about it.

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