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Mike Babcock met with the media after his team’s first loss of the 2017-18 season.


Where did things break down defensively for you after JVR’s goal?

Babcock: I didn’t think we worked. I thought the other team was good. I thought they skated. I thought they skated us into the ground. They won all the stick battles right from the get go. It was 2-2 at the end of one, but that flattered us big time. We never had any time engaged. We talked quite a bit about this game coming up and how it was going to be. That’s exactly what I expected, but I expected us to compete and that didn’t happen. Hockey is fair. You get what you deserve. That’s what we deserved tonight.

Is there a lesson to take forward?

Babcock: Well, obviously, we’ve got an off day tomorrow, so we’re going to enjoy that, and then we’ll get back and get ready to work. Life is so simple. You do good things, good things happen. You don’t, you cheat yourself, and you look like that. We’ll have lots of time tomorrow to look at the game tape and get ourselves ready. We’re going to play a hungry Montreal team. We’re going to have to be way better than we were tonight. I was disappointed. I can’t remember the last time we played with that kind of effort. I mean, they’re goalie was great and all of those things. I’m not taking anything away from their team, but we didn’t have any snap, any juice. We didn’t win any battles.

On the 3 on 5 goal for the Devils:

Babcock: I don’t know if I’ve ever seen that. Maybe I have, I don’t know.

What did you see from Rosen and Borgman tonight?

Babcock: They fit in good. We weren’t very good, guys. We’ll take a look at it. It’s over with now. Obviously, the message sent wasn’t received these last few days. We knew what we were in for, but we didn’t do our part. It’s disappointing.

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