January 14 postgame quotes: Kempe and LoVerde

Adrian Kempe, on what is did to the team to lose Mersch and have to battle without him:
It’s always tough when you lose a guy like Mersch because he’s a really important guy for our team and he’s really good in the offensive [zone] and really good on the PK and everything. It’s tough but I think we just got to address that and keep going and play the game that we should play. I think the whole team did that, too. We played a great sixty minutes out there tonight so I think that was good.

Kempe, on whether he feels his confidence changing as of late:
When you score of course you get confidence and I’ve scored quite a bit lately so I think that was good for me. I think I’ve play better overall, both in the D-zone and the O-zone as well so my confidence is better now than it was before. I’m just glad that I can find the net.

Kempe, on how the team was able to overcome Mersch’s absence:
Some guys had to play more and I think I had to play a lot more tonight than I usually do. It’s always fun to play more and be out there more on the ice. I like to be out there more because then I know the coach wants me out there. … It’s always tough when you lose a guy but you’ve got to address that and keep playing our game.

Kempe, on the strongest part of the Reign’s game right now:
We came back to the game we played after the couple of losses we got here. I think before that we had a good win streak and we played a fast game. We had the puck a lot and lots of shots and I think the last three or four games here we haven’t had that [many] shots as we did before. I think we bounced back tonight and we had a really good game.

Vincent LoVerde, on how losing Mersch effected the game:
It impacts our team immensely. He’s first line winger. He gets to the dirty areas. Scores goals for us, kills penalties. It effects us a lot. Got forwards playing more minutes and kudos to them. The guys who had to fill Merschy’s role tonight did an awesome job. It’s obviously a tough loss for us. We don’t know to what extent or how serious it is but it’s definitely a big loss for us.

LoVerde, on the defensive effort overall and clearing out rebounds:
I thought we did a great job. As long as Soupy makes that initial save we’re going to try to get pucks out of that dangerous area. I thought the defensemen did a great job. The forwards did a great job coming back to the dirty areas in front of the team. It was a great team effort I thought.

LoVerde, on how it felt to get back on track after discipline issues a night ago:
It was good. I thought that was one of our better team performances in probably for a while here, maybe since Christmas break. Thought it was a good game from the goalie on out. I thought everyone played well. Yeah, Stuttsy was a little upset yesterday. We had a long video session today but I thought everyone responded very well.

LoVerde, on the feeling of today’s win versus yesterday’s:
I just thought we played a better system game. I thought we moved pucks quicker. I thought the D did good job at getting back to pucks, moving it up to the forwards. Forwards did a better job of chipping pucks in and turning their D around. We just played a smarter game today as opposed to yesterday. I thought we were a little slow yesterday and I thought today was much, much better than it was yesterday.