October 16 postgame quotes: St. Louis

David Backes, on the loss:
It was a hard, physical, mans’ game. When you outshoot any team 40-something to less than 20, I think we played pretty well. A few posts or chances in tight, have to find a way to put those in past Jonathan Quick. He’s an all-world goalie, no question, but we’ve got all-world players in here. We’ve got to find a way to put some of those in, myself included.

Backes, on whether St. Louis’ roster has been built similarly to Los Angeles’:
Some ways yes, some ways no. They’ve obviously got a great recipe for success and have two cups in the last three years to prove it. That being said, we’ve got our own personnel and methods and strengths to produce wins and get through a regular season and get to the playoffs. And then, we’ll take the next step when we get there.

T.J. Oshie, on whether the loss is especially frustrating:
It’s fine. I think we sent a message to them tonight. We did a good job tonight. We played how we want to. We’ve got to put a couple pucks in the net.

Oshie, on his shootout attempt:
I tried to do something a little simpler. I don’t really like the new format where they don’t do the ice [before the shootout]. So I thought I’d just keep something simple and he wasn’t as aggressive as I thought, so maybe next time.

Brian Elliott, on his second 1-0 shootout loss to Los Angeles in his career:
I don’t know what it is. It doesn’t happen often and it’s happened twice here. It’s kind of the way we match up I guess. We’ve got to take that next step. But when you get 40-plus shots on a good team in their building, you can take a lot of positives away from that. You’re going to win a lot of games if you do that. We got the one point and we’ll just keep plugging along. We don’t want to hang our heads on that one.

Elliott, on Jeff Carter’s shootout goal:
I don’t know. I’ve never seen that move before. You want every goal that goes past you back. I made a couple of good saves after that. Obviously Quickie made three on us. That’s the way it ends.

Ken Hitchcock, on whether he is pleased with his team’s performance:
Well, we didn’t score goals. We had pressure at times. Both teams played hard, both teams played well. I thought neither teams’ power play helped themselves. And probably that’s why the game instead of being 2-2 or 3-3 is [0-0]. Neither teams’ power play was very effective. We looked rusty on the power play and we looked very competitive and good five-on-five.

Hitchcock, on his players not scoring on offensive opportunities:
I think that’s the rust. It’s not playing enough. This is our third game of the year. We had a lot of chances, we had a lot of scoring opportunities but we’ll get better on those things as we move forward. I thought what was really evident today was some of our bigger players had a slow start and then really got going, like bigger size-wise. When you take as much time off as we do, it’s difficult. But I thought as the game went on, some of our bigger guys got more engaged as it went on.

Hitchcock, on Brian Elliott’s performance:
Els has played great all year. He’s been outstanding the whole time. He looks like he wants the ball and he looks like he’s really handling the responsibility really well right now.