Going back to Quick

Jonathan Quick is expected to start in goal tonight against St. Louis, one night after he gave up three goals on 16 shots and got pulled late in the first period in favor of Erik Ersberg. Quick certainly didn’t get a lot of help, as he had to help kill penalties and had a teammate put one puck into his net, but as he did immediately after the game, Terry Murray said the goalie replacement was due to two factors: he desire to create a spark, and a bit of dissatisfaction with Quick.

MURRAY: “It’s a real hard, critical point of the game. It’s that time of the year, when everybody has to really give a lot of desperation. We’re killing penalties, and we’re frustrated by what’s going on out there. We’re breaking sticks. Two goals are scored, when Stolly breaks his on the faceoff and Doughty breaks his stick. We get messed up because of that.

“The one goal that I didn’t like, personally, was the second goal, the one-timer off the far side. That’s a play that we have to have, that’s all. It’s real desperation. It’s doing the right thing on the penalty killing. We just have to get a stop on that play. So I looked at that, and the way things were continuing to go in the first period, giving up 17, 18 shots, and we just needed a change also. We needed a bit of a timeout, I guess, to delay things and settle things down and get re-organized.”

Murray added that his first thought was to put Quick back in the game…

MURRAY: “My intent was to put him back in at the start of the next period. That was the thought process, and then when I got in between periods, I just decided to stay with the change.”

Murray also reiterated his praise for Ersberg, who hadn’t appeared in a game since Feb. 11 but came in and stopped all 14 of the shots he faced in regulation.

MURRAY: “Erik did a good job. Billy Ranford, and Jamie and Mark, they do a great job after the morning skates, in particular, with extra work. They really push him and demand a lot from him on the work side of it. They set up drills that are game-like scenarios. So I knew he was ready to get going and that he would do a good job for us. I was not concerned about the game-like conditioning, because of the intensity of the practices.”

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