Murray postgame quotes

Terry Murray’s postgame thoughts…

(on the game…)
MURRAY: “I liked our effort. I liked our start to the game. Our first period was what you’d like to see after a two-week break. Overall, I liked our effort. There’s things we’ve got to address as we move forward now. A little bit better in our D-zone coverage. We lost some coverage in situations but, again, the effort, the focus, the concentration was good. The power play, penalty killing was good. Jonathan Quick, coming back, gave us a good effort.”

(on Doughty’s game…)
MURRAY: “He had a great game. He had the puck a lot. He made some really good plays. He must have had four points on the five goals. I remember him having the puck a lot tonight. He was sharp and alert. He brought great focus again. I clearly was concerned about the Olympians coming back, and a step back in their intensity, but everyone was on board and on page here tonight.”

(on the 11-1-1 run…)
MURRAY: “It’s about the players. The players come out and play hard for each other. There’s a lot of nice chemistry in the locker room. That goes back to the summer time, and it has just carried through with this kind of `I’m in this for you’ attitude. That’s what you have to have, that kind of a team effort, physical effort. You have to have that kind of an attitude where everybody is on the same page, doing the right thing and caring about your teammates.”

(on having success against the Stars…)
MURRAY: “Well this was clearly a big game here. Coming back, first of all, after the Olympic break, and both teams are coming off four or five practices. We look at the standings and we know the situation. Every game is going to squeeze somebody in the conference and, again, our game here tonight was important. We try to put a little bit of separation, if we can, and we got it done.”

(on Frolov’s game…)
MURRAY: “Fro had a good game. He was very strong on the puck. He just followed through with the kind of effort we’ve seen in the last several days of practice. He’s been tremendous with his hard work and getting himself prepared to give this kind of an effort. He’s certainly a world-class player in my mind. He’s a 30-goal scorer, and this is an incredibly important month for us, with 20 games now, and we need our best players to step up like that.”

(on whether he intended to play Doughty and Johnson that much…)
MURRAY: “We want to play those guys a lot. They’re big, young guys who are powerful, strong players and have an impact on every game. The plan is to go with those guys and ride them as hard as we possibly can. We see the level of intensity and play that they brought, that world-class level, during the Olympics, and they’re capable of doing that every night, we feel. So we’re just going to run with it.”

(on Quick’s game…)
MURRAY: “I liked it a lot. There was certainly concern, on my part of it, with him being the third goaltender for Team USA. They had five afternoon games, without any morning skates, which is usually the time when these guys are going to get their work. I was kidding with him before the warmup tonight, that he probably saw a dozen or two dozen pucks over the whole Olympic break, or the Olympics. He kind of agreed with me. That’s when you have to rely on your instincts, you have to rely on your game. You’ve got to trust your game and you have to really work hard on your concentration. He found pucks tonight that were coming in tough situations, and that’s a real credit to his effort.”