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Mike Babcock addressed the media after his team’s 5-4 win in Carolina on Friday night.


On winning despite a slow start and a shaky finish:

Some nights, they’re ugly. Kenny Holland used to say, “It’ll be a Picasso in the morning when you look at the standings.” That’s what it is. You know, they were quicker and jumped better than us. Obviously, we scored some good goals and some timely goals, but Freddy was the main event for sure. I thought Luongo played unbelievable in Florida. We had clear-cut great chances and so we didn’t end up getting two points. I thought, tonight, Freddie did the same for us. Gave us a real opportunity.

On Josh Leivo getting on the score sheet for his first goal of the season:

It’s good. He got himself a goal and that’s positive. I don’t think anybody in our organization doesn’t think he can help. You’ve got to take someone’s job — that’s the issue with it. You’ve just got to keep battling. We’re going to change our lineup for tomorrow and get fresh guys in, so we’re going to talk about that on the plane and get ready.

On the slow starts that have been a consistent problem of late:

We’re just going to talk about it and fix it because the players aren’t happy and I’m not happy. We’ll fix that. You don’t want to play catch-up… now, we didn’t. Sometimes, on the road especially, you’ve got to weather the storm early in the first ten minutes. But that wasn’t weathering. That was just getting beat to the puck.

On Nikita Soshnikov’s play since joining the big club:

He hasn’t been like he normally is out there. For whatever reason, that’s part of… We didn’t bring Sosh here to judge him on two days or anything like that. You’ve just got to get back to work.

On the team’s pattern of getting outshot and winning anyway:

I don’t worry about getting outshot if we start on time and we get the lead and then with the way the game is, you get outshot. That wasn’t the case here tonight, though. That’s a different kind of outshot. I think lots of times, when you have the lead — especially in the third — you get outshot. I don’t worry about that. But tonight, when they start on time and we didn’t, that’s a concern. So we’ll fix it.

On Patrick Marleau getting the 102nd game-winner of his career:

Yeah, he’s got to track Shanny down. I’m hoping he’s tracking him down before the end of the year. That would mean… I think he needs eight more to track Shanny down? Seven more? We’ll get them this year. That’d be good.