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Mike Babcock met with the media after his team’s 1-0 overtime victory over the New Jersey Devils on Thursday night, extending their winning streak to five.


On how the game broke down tonight:

I thought Freddie was really good, especially in overtime when we missed the guy. Good opportunity there, obviously, at 4-on-3 in overtime. That was a big part for us. But it was a tight-checking game. There wasn’t a lot of room for anybody. It was probably boring for the fans, but it’s kind of what I expected. I was glad we embraced it, stuck with it and found a way to get two points.

On William Nylander’s shift prior to his goal:

I told him to go thank Freddie. He would’ve never scored. He needed to score a goal, right? He hadn’t scored in a while. He missed his guy and his guy was in alone on Freddie, obviously. Those things happen. That’s why you pay the goalie. It was a big save.

Now Willy can loosen up and get playing, too. When you haven’t scored in a while, as a young guy, you get thinking too much instead of just playing and working. We’ve got to get our guys convinced of that. If you just work, everything works out fine.

On the difficulty of selling that program to skilled young players:

They want to score and they want to score every night. If you’re a point-getter, you think you should be doing that every night. You’re not used to it. The NHL sends you for long stretches. Every other league you played in never sent you for stretches like that. You’re not used to it. And no one knew before when you didn’t score. Now everybody writes about it every day. And you can’t help yourself; you’ve got to look at your phone every second you’re away from the rink. It doesn’t matter what you tell them. That’s what they do.

On the progression from the team as far as buckling down defensively:

I think tonight was a game where there was absolutely no room. I don’t think, if you asked our guys, they’d tell you it was fun to play in. Once it is fun to play in, then we’ll have made some steps.

On how they got to have some fun at 3-on-3 overtime:

There you go. Why do you think? They got to touch the puck for once. Some shifts were 20 seconds long with three whistles.