January 9 postgame quotes: Dallas

Lindy Ruff, on whether the Stars balance of “puck luck” tipped back in their favor against LA:
I thought it tipped a little bit in our favor. You look at the start of the second period, you know I was frustrated because we didn’t come out of that with two or three goals with the opportunities we had. Sharp had a couple point blanks, Seguin had a point blank, I thought it was going to be an other one of those nights but we got some pucks there. Some pucks went off some bodies and I think we deserved to win the game. I thought we played hard. It was a hard game, but I think at the end we deserved to win it.

Ruff, on Lehtonen getting pulled out of the net two games in a row:
Yeah he’s had some tough times so it, you know, it just got to the point I had to pull the trigger and I thought Antti gave us a couple saves and you know, it’s hard. We’re battling for our lives and I know he’s battling too. They pulled their goalie too at the same time so it’s the same battle. This league is so tight right now that this two points keeps us two points within them and it’s an important two points in the standings.

Ruff, on whether being two points away from a playoff spot is encouraging:
Well it’s like I said, we’ve played some hard hockey that we’ve given away some points and we haven’t had some of the puck luck we had tonight. Nobody would’ve anticipated ten goals between these two teams right now and I just felt that the first period was a real tight period. I loved the way our team came out in the second period.

Ruff, on Brett Richie’s game and his goal in the first period:
That was a big goal for us. I mean when you get that one at the end of the period, I thought those guys did a great job forechecking. Our third guy got right in on the top, created the turnover and then just a real quick play where I didn’t think there goaltender had a chance on it.

Ruff, on getting goals from Sharp and Hudler:
I said before the game I need three guys to score, and I said I wanted Ritchie to score, I wanted Sharp to score and I wanted Hudler to score. One of the coaches said why didn’t you put Eakin in there, too? I said we’ll work on him next game. No it is, it’s important for those guys. We need them to score, part of our success will be they’ve got to get on the scoresheet for us.

Patrick Sharp, on the Stars struggling to score on the road and then scoring six against LA:
Yeah, you don’t expect to score six against a team like LA. I think the biggest one was the first one. I thought they came out and were really taking it to us. We held the fort as best we could and Ritchie scoring that first one kind of settled us down a bit. I thought we had a good second period and wild finish, you never expect to win a game like that but on the road in a tough building against a team like that, we’ll take the win.

Sharp, on whether he’d like this game to set the tone for the rest of the Stars’ season:
It’d be nice. We want to gather up some points here. I think they can say the same thing, I think a lot of teams across the league can say that. It’s going to be a grind from here on out and any time we have a chance to force overtime or win in regulation we’ve got to make sure we really buckle down and do so.

Sharp, on the Stars getting a bit of puck luck against LA:
Yeah nice to put a few in. Some guys scoring their first ones in a while and you know, we’ll take it. I think, you know our room we don’t feel like scoring is going to be an issue, the way we’re going to win games and succeed is keeping pucks out of our net and then playing well defensively. We say that all the time so just happens tonight that we needed just about all those games to win.

Sharp, on tomorrow’s game against Anaheim:
Doesn’t get any easier driving down the road and playing a tough Anaheim team. That’s always a physical game, tough building to play in back-to-back on the road but we’re excited and big win here. We’re excited to go play tomorrow and go see what we can do.

Tyler Seguin, on whether the Stars balance of “puck luck” tipped back in their favor against LA:
Yeah, yeah I mean definitely we had some good bounces tonight. It was a great character win tonight. That’s a big heavy team over there and I thought we competed hard with them throughout the whole night. Obviously some goals that I think we’d like to get back and some goals they’d probably like to get back so you know, one of those games and found a way to win so it was nice.

Seguin, on the Stars struggling to score on the road and then scoring six against LA:
Yeah definitely important. I think, you know, it’s a good feeling scoring but it’s better when defending so again, we’re happy that we got two points. We’ve got another big win tomorrow night against another big strong team so we need to bring that compete we brought tonight.

Seguin, on how the team is feeling at the halfway point of the season:
Well I mean, we’ve got a long season ahead of us. It’s halfway, we know the journey we’ve got ahead of us and we know the West isn’t quite like the East. I mean, there’s room to get going and we can put a few in a row here.