Mike Babcock addressed the media after his team’s 6-4 loss in St. Louis, their fifth defeat in the last six games.
On where it went wrong after a good start:
Babcock: I really thought we did [start well]. The first 10 minutes we were good. I thought they were better than us and thought they dominated the second period and had lots of chances, rolled around in our zone. We didn’t have enough jump and enough juice and enough legs by any means. The game got out of hand, obviously. We took some penalties. They were better than us. We made it look closer, probably, than it was at the end. But we’re fortunate the trip is over. We’ve got to go home and have an off day tomorrow and get regrouped and get back on track. We were sitting pretty good a week ago or ten days ago, and now we’ve got to get back on track and get things fixed up and get playing good and get some swagger back in our game. They were better than us.
I like us to start on time and to play right and do things good. To me, you’ve got to have 20 guys on deck and ready to go. We didn’t have that tonight.
On whether the team isn’t as bad as it seems right now, just like how they weren’t as good as they seemed when they were 6-1:
In saying all that, we’ve had a tough trip and we’ve played good teams and all of that. But, obviously, we’re not in a situation where we’re handling this very well. We’re not playing good enough. Like I said, we’ll have to get ourselves regrouped. We’ve got a Vegas team that seems to win every night coming into our building here and we’ve got to be ready to play.
On Andreas Borgman’s performance:
I thought he was our best D. He’s a competitive guy. I thought he had a good trip. He’s getting better all the time. Him and then the Bozak line, obviously, [were good]. The Matthews line is always good. Matty and Hyman were real good, I should say. The Bozak line — [Martin] is not going to make three better plays than he made tonight. You’ve got to give those guys credit. But we’re not talking about enough people. To have success as a team, you’ve got to have everyone going. When you are playing well, you do have everyone going.
On his level of concern after five losses in six games:
What I would say to you is you’re always concerned. I try to keep that under control as much as I possibly can. In saying that, it’s a tough trip any way you look at it. You guys have been on it. You know what it’s like. We didn’t look like we had much juice here at all tonight. I don’t want to overreact. At the same time, we have to act. Obviously, we’re not playing good enough.
