Following his team’s 2-1 win over the visiting LA Kings on Tuesday night, here’s what Minnesota Wild coach Mike Yeo had to share at his post-game presser…
– On the second period coming close to unraveling: “Well, the last game could have unraveled us too. It’s how you respond. You gotta deal with adversity. To me really what we had done up to the point…You play like that, you should…I don’t want to say easily, but you should be able to deal with something like that. You know, you earn the confidence through the course of the game that you can overcome something like that.”
– On if there was a sense of urgency: “Yeah, if you were watching the game, you could probably see it. What impresses me is that our guys recognize that, and I really believe competitors in games like that find a way to go out and be really good, and that’s what we had.”
– On if it was one of their better team efforts: “Yeah, I would say so. I would say that’s setting the bar for what we need going forward, and the idea is to keep raising the bar. It was obviously a very strong game, but the bar’s been set. And we gotta make sure that we’re ready to bring at least that the next game.”
– On Clutterbuck’s role tonight: “What’s really important to me is he was going out, and he was a real physical impact in the game. He was going forward with pucks and helping Cully and Seto get going with speed to the offensive zone. I thought he was a nice compliment. The other thing that I just want to say, and we gotta talk about, is our leaders tonight. We’ll start with Mikko. The guy was unbelievable. All over the ice tonight. And Zach and Suts. When this time of year you see your leaders playing like that, and it was the same thing that I thought last game. And this game, I thought everybody was going right along with them.”
– On Backstrom playing better: “I think so, yeah. Again I give our guys a lot of credit, but we still got some work to do.”
– On Dustin Brown’s hit on Pominville: “You know, you hate to see a hit to the head. That’s all. I really can’t say much more than that.”
– On the refs staying out of the game: “I would say I wish we had a couple more in the second period probably. But, yeah you’re right. I think we probably should get used to that. That’s probably going to be a little bit more of the standard that we’ll see. I thought particularly in that second period that we were doing some really good things. Obviously we’re looking at it through a different set of eyes than their team, but I thought there were some times where we could’ve drawn a couple, but I’m sure they’re thinking the same thing too.”
– On the status of Pominville: “I don’t have a report for that yet.”
– On if he’ll need to stop people from taking runs at Brown in the next match-up: “We gotta worry about Edmonton right now, and we’ll deal with that after.”
– On Backstrom’s response after a tough stretch: “I thought Backy was really good tonight. Made some key saves at key times. I thought that he had a sense of control and kind of an air of confidence about him tonight. Which is extremely important. No matter how hard you play, you can’t play perfect. There’s going to be chances. There’s going to be shots. And I thought that he was there for us.”
– On the shifts leading up to their first goal being strong: “Yeah, again, I really think the physicality started it. We’re at our best when we’re going in straight lines, and we’re arriving there in a hard way. I thought that really started to set the tone. The other part of it, I thought structure-wise we were doing a great job. Creating turnovers and being able to get back at them. So that’s the way the way the game is supposed to look for sure. We just gotta make sure that we don’t get feeling too good about ourselves here. We still got work to do.”
– On how much his team meeting yesterday refocused the team: “Well, I think you know, again with the leadership that we have…There was definitely a sense that we deserved better after the Calgary game. But with that also comes a bit of confidence that it’s not like we didn’t win because we weren’t good enough. We just didn’t win a game that we probably deserved to. What I like. What leaders and competitors do is we say, ‘Okay we didn’t get that one. We’ll come back. We’ll be better.’ And that’s what we did tonight.”
Comments from the Wild players have been posted in a separate article here.
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