December 30 postgame quotes: Doughty, Clifford

Drew Doughty, on his game winning goal:
Tried to get a shot through, Edler did a good job of blocking it, and luckily it just came right back onto my tape and I just shot it again.

Doughty, on whether it makes it tough on goalies when defensemen back off an incoming shot:
Yeah, for sure. And that wasn’t Edler’s fault at all. I don’t know why there’s so much room there but it was impossible for him to have a gap, so it wasn’t his fault. He played it well. But when you’re that tight and you get it in close to the goalie, you’ve got to rip it because goalie can’t see the puck, he can’t react quick enough, and yeah. It was a lucky play, but big goal.

Doughty, on the resiliency of the team:
We always have resilience and we’re the best third period team in the whole league, if I’m not mistaken. And we just don’t give up. Doesn’t matter if we’re down, if we’re up, we push for it. Yeah, we just never give up. When it comes down to it every player here they love being big time players and they want to make a difference in that third period to help us win games and you know, everyone does it from the fourth line to the first line and so on.

Doughty, on being successful on the rush tonight:

Yeah I don’t know, we were really good on the rush today. And when you look good on the rush you know, that’s a key. We had some unbelievable chances and just quick breakouts a lot is where it came from. We got them caught usually it was a D joining the rush to make it a three-on-two and you know, that’s something we practice every day. So it’s good to see it connecting and going into the next game we’ve got to do it again.

Doughty, on what they saw on the pre-scout of the Canucks:
We pre-scout every single team and there’s such slim differences in every single team and their system and whatnot so it’s really just about what your own team is doing and what you need to do better. And we just happened to do it better tonight. I don’t think it was what they weren’t doing, it was really just the fact that we were really playing well. And that’s the bottom line.

Kyle Clifford, on whether the win was the result of a team-wide effort:
Yeah, I thought for the most part everybody contributed. You know, I thought there was a little lapse in the second period, but we adjusted pretty quickly. Yeah it was great to see, well not great to see they got the goal early, but great to see our group battle back. But that’s just the type of character of guys we’ve got in here. We’ve got a real strong team identity and I think that showed tonight.

Clifford, on his goal:

Yeah it’s definitely good to get the first of the year. Lewie made a great play, so credit to him. He’s done a great job all year.

Clifford, on whether Dowd’s goal sparked the team to push back even harder:

You know, I think we were ready to come out for the third period. You know I thought we did a great job in the last thirty seconds there. They kind of got a rush and it was a good goal. And like I said, it was good to see our group battle back and come together and I thought we had a lot of that tonight.

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