Coyotes postgame quotes

Here are some Coyotes quotes, as provided by the team, after last night’s game.

Those who watched the game probably know that the Coyotes held a lengthy pregame ceremony in honor of Shane Doan, who played his 1,000th NHL game. It was noted, after the game, that the long ceremony might have been a bit of unintentional payback, since it was the Coyotes who, almost three years ago, sat through the long ceremony in which Luc Robitaille’s number was retired at Staples Center. The result of that game? A 3-2 Coyotes victory…

Coach Dave Tippett
(On finishing the game with a 6-on-3 disadvantage…)
“Preferably, you don’t want to be 6-on-3. That’s probably not the best advantage you can have. Unfortunately, it ended up that way, but our guys, give them credit, they hung around, [Bryzgalov] made a couple of good saves and we really didn’t get threatened on it.”

(On the competitiveness of the game and the effect of the pregame ceremony…)
“It was a very competitive game, both sides were very competitive. You know, sometimes you wonder when you have a ceremony like that at the start of the game, if it takes the zip out of the game, but I thought both teams competed pretty hard, and we worked hard for the points.”

(On the defense contributing to scoring and a balanced attack…)
“Like we’ve said all along, they’re part of the committee; they’re not getting off the hook. We’ve got a pretty good balance. I like the way Lang’s line was around it tonight. Lombardi’s line was around it again, and Hanzal’s line always creates chances. That’s kind of who we are and what we have to be and our defense aren’t exempt from that. We expect them to be involved in the play.”

Shane Doan
(On the win…)
“It was huge. Not only sweet to win but we know where they’re at and they know where we are and it’s close and every single game counts so much and is so huge for us and we’ve gotta find ways to keep winning.”

(On the confidence in the locker room…)
“We feel that if we play the way we’re capable of playing, we can beat anybody, and that’s a great feeling to have and we really feel that way. We feel that it doesn’t matter what building we go in to, where we’re playing, who we’re playing, if we play our best game we can win.”

Robert Lang
(On the win…)
“These games are hard after a break, and they had eight days between games and it’s hard, even though they did get a couple of key players back. Every time you do have a long span without any games, and on top of that two days without practice, it’s hard to come back and be 100 percent sharp and just click, and I think maybe that was our advantage, but I think that we’ve been pretty good at finding a way to win and today was a perfect example. It got down to 5-on-3 the last minute of the game and we still kind of blocked it out and Bryzy [Ilya Bryzgalov] made a couple of saves and we made sure that we did get those two points.”