April 28 postgame quotes: San Jose

Todd McLellan, on his team’s response to the goal:
Obviously we didn’t respond very well. At that point, with seven minutes left, you open it up a little bit and two or three shifts later we’re caught pinching and give up an outnumbered rush and add three. It’s not completely over, but it’s looking pretty gloom. They’re a tough team to play against when they have the lead. And you try to open it up and they make you pay for it. You have to play even or you have to play ahead and our take home value of it will be to that seven or six minute mark. And then after the goal, we’ll call it, we have to respond better, but we get a chance to in Game 7.

McLellan, on what he wants to see from his top players in Game 7:
I want to see a winning performance. Tonight was a hell of a game. It was back and forth. It was rugged. It was a hard fought game by both teams and their guys ended up scoring late after that goal. But we need a Game 7 performance from everybody and our big guys are going to have to find a way to get on the boards at some point. But we’ve done it before, we can do it again.

McLellan, on not being surprise by Los Angeles’ comeback in the series:
No, I’m not surprised at all. I think if we go back, we can talk about the expectations of the series going back to being very tight checking. I think the biggest change is they got rid of their sloppy play and got back to playing their type of game and it’s a tough type of game to play beat obviously for us. We’ll have to do a better job in Game 7.

McLellan, on Alex Stalock’s performance:
He has a shot to play Game 7. I thought Alex played very well. After the goal, the second goal, with about seven minutes left… they came back and scored two quick ones. But to that point, I thought Alex was very good.

Alex Stalock, on that goal being a turning point in the game:
Obviously, they take the lead late in the third. I mean, not late, but eight minutes left maybe. It was, I’d say, a big part of the game and they made a good play I guess. Going hard to the net and those are the goals that are eventually going to win the series.

Stalock, on being pushed into the net:
I think I did, but I guess that’s up to your decision on what you saw. I don’t think the puck goes in if I don’t get pushed in. I don’t think the puck was rolling. It was still, so something had to be done for the puck to move into the net. [Reporter: It’s not like he got the stick between your pads and poked it in.] No.

Logan Couture, on generating offense:
Get rebounds, get traffic. Tonight, they had some good looks I thought for the majority of that third period. The first 10 minutes, we were playing the way we wanted to and in to the second too. Then they get that goal that I don’t think should have counted and we kind of became unraveled, which shouldn’t have. But it’s time to rebound and everybody has to step up. It’s Game 7.

Couture, on the game winning goal changing momentum:
A lot, you see they scored the third and fourth bang-bang. We’ll look at it. Like I said, I’ve seen it a couple times and I don’t think it should have counted. But things like that happen and it’s up to the team, the leaders, the coaching staff to regroup after a goal like that, which we didn’t and which is disappointing. But move on, move past it. 3-3 in a series, Game 7, they’re a great team, we’re a good team. I think all the outsiders picked this one to go seven and it is, so here we go.

Couture, on giving up a three-game lead in the series:
I didn’t even think about that until now. It’s one game. We go home with the series on the line. We’ve got to play desperate. They’ve played desperate the last three games. They’ve got some bounces, a goal I didn’t like tonight, but that’s the way it goes. It’s a seven game series for a reason.

Couture, on fighting Mike Richards:
Just getting in a fight, I mean frustration builds to it. They’re a team that talks a lot. He’s one of the main guys and I decided to fight him. I thought I did pretty well for my second fight ever.

Couture, on Los Angeles attempting to win the series from a three-game deficit:
Like I said, it’d be different if they weren’t a good hockey team, but they’re a great hockey team over there. They’ve played better than we have the last three games. We played better than they did the first three games. In my mind, if it gets to Game 7 it doesn’t matter how it gets there. It gets there and you’re going for one game. We played all year for the home ice. I’m sure our building is going to be loud and we’ve got to go win a hockey game. We’ve got to turn this thing around and win that game.

Joe Thornton, on giving up a three-game lead in the series:
Well we worked all 82 games to have home ice in this situation. We’d obviously like to have won it. I thought we played well until that one goal that we thought should have been disallowed. We go home and it’s a huge game.

Thornton, on the game winning goal being a turning point in the game:
It was a turning point, yeah. Both teams played solid until that point I think. After that, it’s anybody’s ball game. I think both sides had probably an equal amount of scoring chances. It was a tight, competitive game until then. It just kind of went south on us.

Thronton, on Alex Stalock’s performance:
Al played great. Probably the first period, they had a couple odd-man rushes and he stood tall. But I thought he played excellent for us tonight.

Thornton, on his altercation with Jonathan Quick:
Just Drew was trying to box me out and I was just trying to go the net and just overpowered him, that’s all.

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