Mike Babcock addressed the media after his team’s 4-3 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Tuesday night.
On the team’s performance on a night when they played an excellent 40 minutes and built a 3-0 lead only to give it all back in the third:
I thought we did a lot of good things through two periods. Obviously, they pushed in the third. We didn’t respond and didn’t handle it. There is going to be momentum swings in big games all the time. You’ve just got to stay calm and continue to execute. You go back through the game and we didn’t give up much, to be honest with you. The puck went in. We weren’t good enough in the third and we have to be better. Tonight, we had lots of good players but we didn’t have enough good players. We need more guys on deck. We’ll talk about that tomorrow and get ready for the next one.
On what the team did well in the first 40 minutes to build a 3-0 lead and where it went wrong in the third:
I thought we skated good. We managed the puck. We got on top of them. In the third period, they came at us and we didn’t execute. Any way you look at it, you’ve got a bad line change for a goal and three faceoff goals. Number one — win the faceoff. Number two — execute. Those are simple things that we normally do a real good job of, and we didn’t.
We gave up the first one off the faceoff and then we gave up the line change one where they had a 3-on-2 clear cut. And then we gave up the second where we had possession of the puck and didn’t… and we lost our stick, so tough break, but we still should’ve been able to sort it out. You’ve got to look after the details. We can leave as disappointed as we want, but in the reality, we weren’t good enough in the third period. That’s on us.
On leaving this game behind and looking ahead to the challenge against the league’s number one team in Nashville:
I don’t want to leave it here too soon. Let’s feel like we should. We shouldn’t feel great. We didn’t do what we were supposed to do. We didn’t get the job done. But we’ll get up tomorrow and get on with our life and get ready for Nashville. If anything, you know you can play with these teams. There is no issue that way. But I thought they pushed as a veteran team and I thought we didn’t respond.
