Craig MacTavish Quotes (118 Quotes)

It's devastating for a team. We'll have to pick ourselves up tomorrow.

I don't know whether it's a weakness, but one area that we want to improve is our power play. Our penalty killing has to improve, too. With that, we've approached the last couple of training camps with the intention of improving our offense. Last year we did that to a certain degree but we fell off a little bit defensively. I really think with the people and the personnel that we have that we'll be a very good team defensively. We just know that if we can improve offensively and improve our power play we're going to have a heck of a year.

It's just unbelievable what you have to go through to win a game at this level. You throw absolutely everything you have at the opposition and you have a one goal win. You can't make any mistakes or very few mistakes you have to play a complete game.

It's a huge cop-out to talk about a goalie when you only score two goals. Playing goal for our team, the way we're putting the puck in the net lately, is very difficult.

We made mistake after mistake with the puck. They exposed a lot of the weakness on our team.

He's been close on that move a number of times.

I don't know how serious the injury is, but we prefer him watching the game rather than playing, that's for sure.

You see it a million times at the other end with (Chris) Chelios taking liberties at the same degree or worse and not being called.

Against a team like Detroit, they'll make you pay when you give up those high-quality scoring chances.

Maybe (only) one stretch we were able to roll four lines in succession. That's not the way we wanted to play.

He was unbelievable again tonight. He is more dominant now than at any point of his career and it couldn't come at a better time.

There's no question (the Red Wings) wield the influence over the series. I'm not saying we didn't deserve a number of those penalties but there were a number that shouldn't have been called. We put the game in their hands. It was an egregious error on our part to put the game in the officials' hands.

You keep emphasizing the importance of the games.

I thought it could have easily been called. We contributed to our own demise.

This is the first time we've been involved in an elimination game when it hasn't been us on the eliminating side of things. I haven't seen one of those games in the six years I've been here. We relish the opportunity.

Anytime you score five goals, I don't care where you're playing, it should be enough to win a game by two or three. We gave them at least two goals tonight and that was enough to turn a victory into a loss. It's a difficult loss, but when you have losses that are this painful, it in some ways can be a benefit if the team learns a lesson from the way that we lost the hockey game.

Is this the time of year you want to experiment Absolutely not. But we're not on automatic pilot and winning hockey games so we have to try something else.

It's hard to feel like you have proven anything when you're wallowing through the disappointment right now. But when we analyze it tomorrow, we'll have accomplished a lot of the things that we needed to win the hockey game. We put ourselves in a position to win the hockey game. Our confidence won't have taken a hit certainly going into the game on Sunday.

When that happens, it's a tactical mistake on our part. We can't blame the goalie on that one.

Yeah, we got a break at the end. But we were due for a break, especially Ethan. It was great to see him get a break there and win us a hockey game.

A division title is still within our grasp. We might have to win seven of eight to get it, but it's still there.

At least we got some physical penalties. We've been taking a lot of penalties, but at least there were some aggressive ones. Special teams have been winning us games, but their penalty kill did a very good job against our power play.

You always want to have the ability, if you are protecting the lead or what have you, to go to a more conservative style. It's nice to have the flexibility within your system play where you can employ a couple of different looks.

It's maybe the most important stretch we've had in a number of years. It can be a little overwhelming, but how we handle the pressure is going to be one of the big factors in the success that we're going to have.

Our guys played well. It was a great experience. They have to get wound up to play in the bronze medal game now. That always doesn't seem that enviable when you're preparing for that game, but long-term, not everybody has an Olympic bronze medal either.

There's never an absolute absence of stress, and it compounds after every loss. I got up (one) day and I knew something was missing. It was stress, because we'd won a bunch of games and we were playing well.

It's another example that you have to take care of every aspect of our game. Otherwise it ends up being a loss.

It's preferable if one guys really elevates himself and plays spectacularly, then it makes it easy night in and night out. But that doesn't have to be the case.

Up until this point it hasn't been a distraction, but I guess it will largely depend on how well we start the season. If something hasn't been worked out between Mike and the organization and we start the season poorly there will be a lot of pressure on u

He's ready for a game. The only thing left to determine is when he's going to get that opportunity.

I made the mistake of starting our relief guy tonight. And you can never expect to get nine innings out of your relief guy.

You get tired of being viewed as the perfect opponent. I wondered why they would say that, because they beat us all the time. Teams always said how much fun we were to play against. You want teams to be upset by the way we're playing against them.

We took ourselves out of the game for two periods, then couldn't get it going in the third period. A lot of it was a product of playing a good team.

I thought our defense played extraordinary.

It could have been 10-2. I thought he was really solid. I don't remember too many first shot goals that beat him. We couldn't have won that game with a four-by-six sheet of plywood.

That experience was very evident today. He showed us a pretty good skill level, as well.

We didn't have our normal jump. We were pretty flat.

He took care of business. A punch like that goes around the league in a hurry. News like that travels fast. A big part of Georges' game is that intimidation that he has, and certainly something like that will enhance that level of intimidation.

We'd talked to them about the importance of getting some offence.

It was a great opportunity for us. We knew what this one meant. If we won it would effectively be a five team race.

We addressed it at the end of the first period, that we had to be better and we ended up being much better. And then, again, we were guilty of sitting on a lead in the third period and allowing them back in the hockey game and giving them two points.

Everybody's climbing the learning curve with the new rules and I thought our young players adapted pretty well today.

You hate to have the whole season riding on something like that. But welcome to the new NHL. That's got to be a record for the amount of shooters.

For the first time, I think I've got a good idea who I'm starting right now.

He gave us every opportunity. He made some big saves. That's basically the way he's been playing for us over the past several weeks.

Ryan has been an integral member of our team for a long time around here. We don't have a lot of guys with the type of tenure that Ryan has on our hockey club. That's not withstanding the value that he has purely from a playing standpoint. He's a versatile guy and he really does a lot of things well for us. We are certainly happy to have him back, and happy they settled and made an equitable deal and arrangement before reaching arbitration.

I think any player that missed as much time that Pavel has missed is going to have a little rust in terms of quickness and so forth. We did what I thought was another good job taking away the free-flowing ice from them and forcing him to the outside as best we could.

Hockey moulds and reveals character. The root of it is really built into the character of the person.

In talking to him, he felt more comfortable in the first game in Minnesota than he had in the previous two games.

There's no corners to be cut that don't cost you in the end. You've got to play the game. You've got to play a good, solid game. Anything short of our best game is trouble.