Mike Babcock met with the media after his team’s 4-2 loss to the Philadelphia Flyers on Saturday night.
On the loss, the team’s third in four games:
We made big mistakes. We had a pinch that cost us. We had a two-on-one that should’ve been a penalty through the neutral zone and it cost us, but they’re still odd-man rushes. The penalty kill — they scored off the rush on a structure play. We should’ve been in the right spots. I didn’t like that as much.
I thought lots of guys competed hard. We didn’t have everybody competing hard enough. It’s a process for us, for sure. Things were easy for us early. Now, teams have done a real good job on the neutral zone and made it real hard for us. We had ten neutral zone turnovers in the first period. Any way you look at it, that’s the National Hockey League. You clog it up in the neutral zone and you make it competitive. You’ve got to find a way to be good.
We’ve now got one win in four games, if I’m not mistaken, and two of them were at home. You’ve got to find a way to dig in. I think a bit of reality therapy has probably set in for us. Everything was great and everyone was telling us how great we were. We probably weren’t as great as we felt at that time. Right now, we’re probably not as bad as we feel at this time. So, dig in and win the game.
On Josh Leivo and Kasperi Kapanen’s performances:
I didn’t give Kappy as good of a chance, to be honest with you, but I thought he was good. I thought Leivo was involved in scoring chances and was very good for us and he was competitive. We need more of that from some of the guys that have been playing each night.
On the struggles of the Bozak-centered line:
That’s a great question. It’s multiple people that have been through that line and it’s not going. The biggest thing when it goes bad is confidence. We’ve got to help them find their confidence, but they’ve got to dig in. The first thing — if you come to work every day, you’ve got a way better chance of finding your confidence. That’s an area that we’ve got to get fixed.
On whether he’s going to keep shuffling that line:
Well, I’ve got to figure out what to do. That’s the beauty of the game tape and a deep breath. We’ll take a look at it. We’ve got a long flight tomorrow and we’ll have lots of chance to go through it.
