Mike Babcock met with the media after practice on Friday, discussing:
- The disappointing effort against Carolina and the response in practice
- Patrick Marleau’s contributions so far
- Frederik Andersen’s play to start the year
- The team’s early tendency to let off the next game after big wins over good teams
and more.
What do you demand of your club, Mike, as they get ready for Philadelphia tomorrow night?
Babcock: I didn’t demand very much last night, obviously, if you were at the game and watching. We disappointed ourselves. We had a little chat today, but more importantly, we just got to work for a short period of time. I think we were out there 24 minutes. We tried to get back to work and understand that if you don’t put your work in and you don’t get prepared, you can’t win. The league is too tight. To me, that’s two times that this has happened. Against New Jersey, I felt we were like this. I give more credit to Ottawa, and then I thought last night was totally unacceptable for us. Even though we got off to a real good start and won both our segments — we were 4-1 in one, and 3-2 in the other — and lots things have gone well, if you want to be a real good team, you can’t let this stuff happen. To me, it’s just up to us to decide and not accept being average.
Were you satisfied with the response today in practice?
Babcock: I thought they worked hard. I set it up to go 30 minutes. We were able to get what I wanted done in 24, or whatever. I didn’t want anyone out there wasting any energy fooling around. I want it at game time. That’s what we’ve got our sports science team for. They tell me what I’m allowed to do and how far I’m allowed to go. We should be fresh as can be tomorrow.
Any update on van Riemsdyk?
Babcock: He wasn’t available for practice today.
Do you expect he’ll be available for the game?
Babcock: I don’t know. Leivs is dying to play anyway.
Is that a tough thing for the coach, when efforts like that happen and there is no real reason for it to happen, or how do you see it?
Babcock: Yeah, I’m not going there.
How come?
Babcock: I’m just not.
You had Marleau before in national team situations. How has he been so far for you here? What’s he done that you’ve expected to him to do? How’s he fit in?
Babcock: I think he’s been awesome. He’s a real good pro. He works hard. I thought he was one of our best guys again last night. He works every single day, comes in and takes it seriously, enjoys himself. He doesn’t say very much, but he does it right every day. If anybody is watching him, they’ve got an opportunity to learn from a guy who has been around it. You don’t play 1,500 games by accident. I saw something the other night — he had 99 game winners, or something like that. Ridiculous. You don’t do those things without looking after yourself and being a good pro. To me, that’s an example we needed, and we have.
Are you comfortable in using him in all kinds of different situations?
Babcock: I don’t really want to use him at center, like I did last night. That’s not what why we acquired him. We didn’t acquire him to do that. He was playing good and some of us weren’t. We needed something, so we tried him there. We could always use him there. He’s played a lot of center in his career. But left wing, right wing, penalty kill and power play — he can do it all.
How do you think he might complement Tyler and Mitch?
Babcock: Obviously, we’re looking for something there. We’ve got to get that group going. It’s just one of those things. We need more balance. Don’t get me wrong — I liked a lot of things about us, but I haven’t liked a couple of our efforts. We’ve got to fix it, that’s all.
Is it harder to get the message through when you’re 7-3 and scoring as many goals as you have been?
Babcock: I mean, they were at the game last night. They saw all those people at the game and they saw how they played. I think that message was pretty clear. If you’re sitting on that bench and that clock won’t run out — it just won’t move — I think that’s pretty good torture for you to understand how you’re not playing like you should.
Is there a concern level with [Frederik Andersen] at all, in your mind?
Babcock: No, I thought Freddie fit in good with us last night.
Are you worried he might mentally get worn down when there are goals going in even though he’s, fundamentally, feeling pretty good about his game?
Babcock: I’m not concerned about that at all. I just think that we were no good last night. I think we’ve got to be better, and the more organized we are, the better he is going to be. Last night, if you look at their first three goals, they’re ridiculous on our part. If he’s giving up terrible goals, we’d do something about that; he would’ve been pulled or something like that. That wasn’t the case at all. Would he like have had a couple back? Maybe. But it was on us — not on Freddie.
Did you see more of what you were hoping for in the Los Angeles game?
Babcock: I thought we played real well against Los Angeles. If you go back, we beat Chicago before we lost to New Jersey and everybody was talking about how it’s a good team and a good win, and what happened to us? We weren’t ready to play the next day. And then we beat LA, and it was supposed to be a good team and they hadn’t lost yet. What happened to us? The level of commitment to doing it right every single day for a championship team is that — you have to do it every single day and you’ve got to do it in practice. You’ve got to do it when you don’t feel good and when you travel and you’ve got to do it when you’re tired. You’ve just got to do it every single day, and that becomes the norm and expectation. That’s what we have to set here.
Your two losses at home were to two young teams with lots of quickness that aren’t expected yet to be where they are. Is there any similarity between those two teams and the two losses?
Babcock: There could be. I’m not worried about the other teams as much as ourselves. We weren’t ready to go. We were down early in both games and not prepared. My job is to get us prepared. Obviously, I’m not doing a good enough job because we weren’t prepared. I think you’ve got to go through a few things to understand, kind of, some things that are going on with your team. We have to fix this and look forward. I was pumped that the sun got up today and I’m looking forward to tomorrow.
Do you feel that there is a mental challenge to getting consistent amounts of effort from the team as a whole?
Babcock: I don’t see that. There is the puck. They want it and you want it. Who wants it more? Anybody that has kids, you put a ball on the floor, one kid in the family has the ball all the time. I don’t know why that is. It’s because they want it more — it’s that simple.
