It was a 2-1 game on Monday night, until Dustin Brown potted an empty net goal to finish off the Flames and secure a 3-1 victory for the Kings. Here’s what they were saying back in the Calgary locker room after their latest loss…
Coach Bob Hartley on the overall game: “They put us on our heels. We regrouped after the first period. We felt like we played much better the last 40 minutes. You can’t fault the effort. The effort is there. It’s a couple of reads. You look at their first goal. Brown gets the puck by himself beside the net. We all know who is supposed to cover that area. No one does it on purpose.”
– More Hartley: “After this, obviously when you lose a couple of games in a row you start to lose your confidence and suddenly woop you’re not ready for the next shift and the first thing you know it’s 2-0. That’s what happened to us. We bounced back after the second. Those first two goals had no reason to be there.”
– Hartley on Mikael Backlund’s return: “Backlund, I felt, his first game against the Kings two nights ago was rusty. It’s perfectly understandable. He’s a good worker. I think he’s going to do fine for us. He was progressing tonight. You can tell his game was getting stronger and he scored a big goal for us.”
– Jarome Iginla on the toll from this road trip schedule: “I think the schedule is fine. I think we just got outcompeted and outplayed. The toll is we just dropped three games on the trip. We have fallen way back. There are no excuses regarding the schedule.”
– Iginla on adjustments from last game: “The first period they outplayed us. I thought the second and third we brought our competition level up and we played a lot better but we didn’t get it done. We didn’t play a full three in any game this trip. We look at ourselves, we all want to be in playoffs. We’re not getting it done. We were playing well before we went on this road trip. We got out-battled, outplayed. We had stretches in each game, but it’s the old saying ‘it’s there’ and we didn’t find a way to win these games. This is a big step in the wrong direction. This road trip definitely put us a ways back.”
– Mikael Backlund on the difference between today and Saturday’s game against the Kings: “We worked hard. I thought our effort was significantly better than last game. Last game we played pretty good in the first and not so good in the second and third. Today was vice versa: bad first and then come back and played hard. We have to find a way to win. If we want to win we have to play hard for 60 minutes and be a consistent team. There can’t be any setbacks like on this road trip.”
– Backlund on how it felt to be back on the ice: “It feels better. I felt a little lost the first game. I wasn’t involved enough. I was skating around too much and not taking charge. Today I was trying to be more involved in the game and handle the puck more. It was first game back last game; I was really nervous. It felt like it was my first NHL game again. It feels good having two games now. I felt way better today and competed harder. “
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