Greg Puhalski Quotes (52 Quotes)

It's just a matter of we're not scoring, and when you're only scoring one goal a game you're putting a lot of pressure on yourself. It's hard to win games like that. That's just not going to cut it.

I believe when we're all working hard, we're content with what we have. There were some opportunities to make trades, but we weren't able to make anything happen that would be right at this time.

I don't know what he's thinking. And when he tells me he thinks he's 'doing an excellent job and calling an excellent game,' I guess there's a difference in opinion and that's where the issue lies. It's up to the powers that be, the league, to determine who's right or wrong. No gray area there.

When you go three games and only score three goals that is cause for concern. You just have to work through it, but there is no easy way to do that.

I think things are moving positively and in the right direction. There are things we can sharpen up as far as execution and responsibilities. There are little plays, systematic plays that we have, that it's a matter of focus and concentration as far as the players doing their responsibilities. That's effort, hard work and persistence, and a lot of it is execution as well.

Boy we had a lot of good opportunities. We put a lot of rubber at them. To our credit, we stayed persistent. If it takes that many shots to get it done, then keep doing it.

We're getting a little better as far as not coughing the puck up as much. When we do, that's when we tend to give up more shots. That's something that has gotten better generally as the season has gone on.

You can play defense as long as you are aggressive and forcing, and I thought we did a good job of that in the first half of the game and not so much in the second. We had a lot of penalties, and I think that kind of reared its head in the third period because we looked a little tired. We fell behind 2-0, and a lot of that we did on our own, and we have to correct that to even the series on Thursday.

It's about getting consistent efforts. We can build off this game. It was generally a good effort and we'll need more of that this weekend.

When we take penalties, a lot of the time it's out of frustration through our own frustration and out of carelessness or we stop skating. When we're moving and banging and crashing, we don't take as many because we're in good position.

Our penalty kill in the last month in general has been really good. That's an area, a reason why our goals against has been really down because of the improvements in our penalty killers and the goaltending hand-and-hand, everybody is getting more on the same page as far as responsibility.

I know the guys gave everything they had. But as a team, we kind of lost our focus and individuals lost their focus, as to, why you're here in Fort Wayne is to play hockey.

There's a few familiar faces, but just the fact that we've played them 10 times this year means we are familiar with them and they are familiar with us. We've had good games with them and look forward to playing them.

I thought we had as many good quality scoring chances as they did. But we've got to realize, we can't get into a run-and-gun game with anybody at this time of year. We've got to learn from Game 1 that we've got to play a little tighter in our own zone and a little better defensively.

We were very average. The biggest thing is we didn't have any sharpness to our game tonight. We made some very poor decisions that caused goals. We can't have that any time, let alone a week before the playoffs start.

Typically, if your veteran players are doing it, everyone else will, too. It's just a matter of the more you do it, the more that's where you feel you need to be. It's an attitude. Some players don't think they are able to do that, and they suffer because of it.

This was as good as we've competed in awhile. It was a good bounce-back game from Wednesday. It was a good effort. It was a matter of playing better hockey. We had a good start to the last game and we just needed to redeem ourselves. We have to be a hard-working team and extremely diligent in our efforts. I thought we did a lot of the little things tonight pretty well.

We've got to get together, play well and play hard. This is an experience you have to learn from. You have to overcome it and adapt and keep pushing forward.

Our thinking part is really the area (that needs work). The simplistic nature that we need to dictate and play with was lacking. I thought we looked frustrated and we ran ourselves out of position many times and we did a poor job of concentrating.

One man's loss is another man's opportunity, I guess. We have some extra forwards around here. We'll see what they have. He wants to play in Europe and there's no sense whining about it. We'll go with what we have and do what we have to do.

He played solid. He was consistent all game. He did a good job on penalty killing, which was big for us.

I got no concrete answer (from the officials). It was a delayed call on one of their guys for a penalty, and there was a scramble in front of the net. Then one of the linesmen whistled one of our guys (Galbraith) for slashing. That can't happen, but for some reason they allowed it to go.

I think he's got to go the net. Put his stick on the ice, go to the net, get some garbage goals, simplify it.

We'll take a point any way we can get it. We battled back the last two periods after having just a terrible first period. We were nowhere to be found. Our game slowly got better the last 30 minutes. We really played to our abilities and got three goals as a result of it.

We gave up a 2-0 lead in the first period (Saturday), and we have to learn from it. We have to play smarter and tighter.

It was a good battle with some good fights. We did what we had to do and scored some power-play goals.

We didn't do some of the simple things we had done the last two games. We didn't do them tonight and we got outplayed.

We got in that habit of being too protective and not wanting to give something up. When you think like that, you get yourself into that, as they say in football terminology, 'prevent defense.' You can play defense as long as you're aggressive. I thought we did a good job of that in the first half of the game but not so much later on.

At this time we don't think it's anything serious, but we're making sure.

The emphasis for us is to keep playing well and keep getting wins. Let's take care of business day-to-day.

(It was about) playing away from the puck and tying up people. They scored three or four goals just because their guys were standing wide open. We were standing around watching. We lost the game because, defensively, we simply were not very good.

We have had trouble scoring, but we stayed with the program tonight. We kind of plotted through the game and did not have a high intensity level. But we did what we had to do to win.

(St. Pierre) plays with a lot of pride. Everybody has personal goals, and shutouts are something he takes personal. He's had his chances (lately), and he always seems to get a bad break. This is good for him.

The last two games we haven't played with intensity or smart intensity. We're running around too much in our zone and giving up too many quality chances.

It's all attitude. Some guys are willing to do it. Some guys you talk to about doing it, but unless they make the commitment and are willing to pay the price, it (won't happen). It's a real choice. It's an attitude about getting dirty. You're going to have to have ice packs on your legs and arms. Some guys are very good at it, and some guys need to work at it a lot more.

I thought it was a good win for us. Everybody contributed, and it was a good 60 minutes of effort. It was just what we're looking for.

He scored 34 goals in juniors (with Kingston of the Ontario Hockey league in 1997-98). He's more than capable of scoring 30-plus or 40-plus goals in our league. He just needs to get it set in his mind, and I think he's believing more and more than he has that ability.

You lose in the first round of the playoffs, I don't think it's a success. There were some positives as we were able to overcome a slow start. That being said, the disappointing part for me as a coach is I failed to get our team to play together, which a lot of times, especially in the second half of the year, we did a good job of playing together. But in the playoffs, we didn't do that.

For his first time skating in eight or nine days, and I gave him a lot of information late (Monday) afternoon, he did a good job and competed well for us. He brings some veteran presence and calmness and positioning.

He did a good job of controlling his rebounds. That was good for him and good for the team. I think that last 10 or 12 minutes, Rockford really threw everything they had at us. It was a role-reversal from earlier in the game. We've got to learn from that.

It doesn't matter what type of player you are. Are you willing to go through traffic to score some goals If you're not, shame on you. Really, shame on you.

We let up a little bit. We gave away two goals. We made some bad decisions and need to learn from our mistakes for success.

The opponent, at any time, and especially at this time of the year, is kind of irrelevant in that regard. There are some things you're going to look to counter against with certain teams, but it's mostly about taking care of your own business.

He has been capitalizing on his chances more now than at the beginning of the year. It has been good for him and the club.

You want to have a system where players are interchangeable. When you go through a number of injuries like we did, there are a fair amount of positives that can come out of it. Generally, we've played a lot of people and it has worked because people understand what we wanted.

We had too many penalties in the first, and they were able to score two power-play goals. We battled back and played much better after the first 12 minutes. Generally our play got better as the game went on. It was a matter of not capitalizing enough.

The one thing we've been able to do is get a few extra bodies here, and that has helped. If a player is fatigued or something, you're able to spread around the ice time a little bit. It's also helped with the busy schedule we've had.

I thought it was a good game all around. There was lots of action and both teams played hard. It was a good win. We'll take it and move on.

It's going to be difficult to (make a major trade) because so many teams are jostling for playoff position and they're not going to be willing to part with anything without you giving up a lot.

I'm not a big worrier simply due to the fact that it doesn't do anything for you. It's a matter of getting our hockey club to play consistent hockey, and that's what we have to do in Game 3.