O'Donnell postgame quotes

Click below for Sean O’Donnell’s postgame thoughts…

(on losing leads…)
O’DONNELL: “We’ve proven that we can play. I don’t think this team questions that we have the ability, and we play as a team as well as anyone on any night, but I think we still have a ways to go as far as learning, me included, as a team. What to do every night, how you have to bring your best effort every night. When you don’t have your A-game physically, when you don’t feel as well, then mentally have to make less mistakes than the other team. I think that’s the part we’re still getting right now.”

(on the poor play in Saturday afternoon games…)
O’DONNELL: “I’d like to chalk it up just to coincidence, because if it’s not, I can’t figure out exactly what it is. It was a pretty decent game, back and forth, and that’s a pretty hungry team over there that’s been struggling. They seem to be catching stride right now. We still have those hiccups, every now and then, that seem to bite us in the butt.”

(on allowing at least 30 shots on goal in five consecutive games…)
O’DONNELL: “One of the things that we’re trying to harp on is, I really believe that we have one of the better group of forwards, as far as cycling and playing down in their end. When we’re playing our game, we can tire a lot of teams out defensively. I think what that does is, even though it might not look the prettiest, and guys might get frustrated because they’re not getting the quality chances all at once, and not getting the nice 2-on-1s or 3-on-2s, you’re also eliminating the other team from being in your end. You’re tiring them down. You’re taking momentum away and you’re making some of their best players play in their end and cover the point, things like that. We just have to realize that when we do that, even if we’re not scoring, we’re not letting them score. We’re wearing them down, we’re taking momentum from them, we’re tiring them out, and it’s just something that we have to stick to. It’s not always a glamorous way to play, but it’s effective.

“It’s almost like a running game in football. You pound the team and you pound the team and you pound the team, and then the other plays will open up. But I think we still need to establish that identity, that running game, whatever you want to call it, that teams know. There have been times — against Chicago and some of the better teams in the league — when we’ve had it down low and we’ve dominated teams for periods at a time. Then, for whatever reason, we have success and then we think, `OK, this is easy,’ and we change it up.”