Mike Babcock addressed the media after his team’s 5-1 loss to the Boston Bruins to open the Eastern Conference quarterfinal series.
On the team’s performance and the final result:
I thought they were better than us in the first ten minutes, or whatever. I thought we got the game settled right down. I thought we were better than them in the first ten minutes of the second. We had a real good opportunity on the power play that went through the crease to make it 2-1. They came down and scored on the power play. Obviously, our penalty kill wasn’t good enough.
We took too many penalties in the third. In the third, there was no contest. They were better than us.
Obviously, we’ve got to get regrouped. Coming in here, you’ve got to win a game. We still have one game to do that, but they were more competitive than us. At the start tonight, I thought we had the game going pretty good, but we didn’t have enough.
On whether a suspension could be forthcoming for Nazem Kadri’s third-period hit on Tommy Wingels and if Kadri needed to keep his emotions more in check:
I don’t know… I haven’t looked at it enough, so I can’t really comment on that. We’ll let the league do what the league does. The bottom line is, you’ve always got to be disciplined at all times. I think emotion is real important in the game, but it’s got to be controlled.
On whether the team is going to be deflated after a Game 1 loss like this:
I think we’re a pretty good team that has won lots of games. To me, when you get beat, you just get regrouped. We’ve got a day to solve our problems. We can feel sorry for ourselves if we want here tonight, but that’s a waste of energy. Let’s just get back to the hotel and get a meal, get regrouped, have a good practice tomorrow, and come back at it.
On the dominance of the Patrice Bergeron and Brad Marchand line:
We’ve got to be better, obviously. They had too much… Now, we’ve played against them lots. Give them credit — they were good. We weren’t good enough. The puck went in for them; didn’t go in for us. They were better than us. They won Game 1. That’s the beauty of this. We’ve got to win four and they’ve got to win three, so that’s where we are at.
