Murray postgame quotes

Terry Murray’s postgame thoughts…

(on the wild third period…)
MURRAY: “Not good. Not the kind of drama you want, but you win the game. That’s a big division, it’s two points, an important two points. We found a way to come back. We were reeling a little bit when the score got to be 4-3, and now it’s tied. Actually, quite honestly, in my opinion when it became 4-3, we settled down. We relaxed and said, `We don’t have to protect the lead any more. It’s not there. It’s tied. So let’s just go play the game.’ I think we started to play much more organized after that.”

(on whether that’s why he didn’t call a timeout…)
MURRAY: “Well, you get the TV (timeouts). We’re talking on the bench the whole time. Sometimes, a timeout, at that time, maybe just embarrasses everybody too. The players know. We’re talking about it. Everybody is talking about it. During TV timeouts, everybody is saying the right stuff, and you’ve just got to regroup and find a way.”

(on whether it felt like a playoff atmosphere…)
MURRAY: “Yeah, it was pretty competitive. They started off very well, with a lot of momentum off their big win last night against Detroit. They really set the tempo of the game in the first period, with a lot of cycle and a lot of offensive-zone time. They get the first goal and, of course, we respond, which was obviously needed at that time. Then we started to play much better.”

(on the slow start…)
MURRAY: “We were trying to play. They were just playing very well. They had a lot of energy. They cycled the puck extremely well, as they did last night against Detroit. I saw some real good things in the offensive zone on their part, and they just continued with it.”

(on the play of the Kopitar line…)
MURRAY: “The Kopitar line had a big responsibility tonight, playing against one of the premier lines in the league. I liked what happened in the last 10 minutes of the third period. There was a lot of dig-in by Kopitar and that line. There was a real battle going on before the fifth goal was scored. It was hard, it was heavy. There were two big men battling against each other, and we ended up scoring on it. Yeah, they did a real big job for us tonight.”

(on what the team can learn from the game…)
MURRAY: “That’s what I did say to the team after the game here, that we do have to take some stuff away from this game. Obviously the win is great, but when you have a 4-1 game, you’ve got to know how to settle things down when it gets to be 4-2. They’re a good team. They’re going to come at you. They’re going to bring their defensemen up on the attack, which they did, and things will happen. But when it gets to be 4-2 or even 4-3, in a critical time, you’ve just got to relax. You’ve got to settle down. You’ve got to be able to win those one-goal games. To me, that’s what you have to take away from it, that experience that we just went through.”

(on the winning streak…)
MURRAY: “You’re supposed to win games. That’s our job. We’re supposed to go out every day and we’re supposed to win 82 games. That’s what we want to do. Are we surprised? I hope not. This is our job. We’re supposed to go out and play and compete and be intense and battle and make every situation an important situation. At the end of the day, you want to win games, so we’re just trying to follow through with that.”

(on any reaction from the team to trade rumors…)
MURRAY: “The only way that that would be brought into the team is by the players themselves reading and hearing. There’s nothing that I pay attention to. To me, it’s like Justin Williams. He’s injured. He broke his leg. He’s been out for six weeks. OK, you’re gone, another guy moves in. So I don’t talk about trades or all the rumors that are out there. I treat it the same way as an injury. It’s out there, it’s gone. We just move on and we keep focused on what we’re doing.”