Murray postgame quotes

Terry Murray’s postgame thoughts…

(on the importance of evening the series…)
MURRAY: “It’s real important if you want to win the series. (laughs) The percentages of going down 2-0 and ending up winning a series are slim. It has been done, and certainly I know that, but to be able to get a split and come into this building and deal with the emotion of a Canadian crowd, it was a real good, solid team effort here tonight. The young guys played well. They played like veterans for me. I thought they showed a lot of composure and did the right things. Special teams were huge obviously, with two power-play goals and some big penalty kills. A lot of good things for the team tonight.”

(on what was said after the 2-0 deficit…)
MURRAY: “There wasn’t a whole lot said. That’s been one of our trademarks all year long. I think that our team has shown great grit over the year. To me, in the National Hockey League you’re going to get into hard situations. You’re going to get down. You’re going to get down one, two, and you’ve got to find a way to dig in and battle back. That’s what is critical to playing this game, that you have the ability to show that grit and determination to come back. We’ve done it many times before. We did talk about that at the end of the first period. `We’ve got to find a way. We’ve got to get one in the first 10 minutes and just build on that.”’

(on the importance of keeping the Sedins scoreless…)
MURRAY: “We didn’t talk a lot about that. We did in the pregame and we did talk about it yesterday. It’s a premier line in the league. They probably are the best line in the league. We have to have great awareness. We tried very hard to get a matchup. We changed on the fly a few times to get the back end matched up. You’re not going to toally eliminate those scoring opportunities. They’re too good, but you’ve got to try to limit their number of quality chances. I thought tonight, when they had their scoring chances, Quick was right there for us.”

(on Doughty’s big minutes…)
MURRAY: “He should play that. When I looked at the time sheet at the end of the first game, he’s 24 minutes. We have a premier young player here that, the more he plays the better he gets. I believe he should be playing 30 minutes. The elite players do that, and they find a way to get the job done. They always come back with the next shift and they’re energized. They just know how to do that. It’s just an inate skill that they have. He was huge for us tonight.”

(on Scuderi drawing the overtime penalty…)
MURRAY: “Pretty smart play. That’s a veteran player that’s been through the playoffs. He recognized the situation. The puck is on his stick and he knows there are too many players and he puts it right back to the bench. That’s as good a read that was made maybe all night long, by anybody on the ice.”

(on Simmonds’ play…)
MURRAY: “Simmonds played tremendous here tonight. He was twice the player that he was in Game 1, I felt. Skating, he’s on the puck, he played heavier, he played grittier. He just was more aware of what was going on. I thought, in the first part of the first period, he maybe showed a little bit of being not sure what to do, where to go, on that top line, but by the middle of the first period he was on track and had good flow to his game, was reading off those guys and scored a huge goal. I liked what I saw.”