Mike Babcock addressed the media after his team’s 4-1 loss to the Boston Bruins on Saturday night.
On the loss:
Yeah, I thought they were better than us. I thought they were quicker. We were in a real good spot after one. We hadn’t been great, but we were still tied 1-1. We came out on the power play and hit the post, and Rask makes a real good save.
But the game is fair. I thought they were quicker, better executed, harder, and had more players going than we did tonight. And it showed.
On the lessons to take forward going into Monday’s game versus Anaheim:
I think the biggest thing is, if you don’t have everyone on deck and you don’t have everyone ready to go, you’re not going to win very often. I thought we had a good job of that of late, and I didn’t think we got that tonight. We just didn’t have enough players.
The other thing about it: When the game was there, after one, you hadn’t been great and it’s time for a pushback. We didn’t have a pushback.
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On whether it’s discouraging after the efforts were so good in the last three or four games:
Yeah, but, I mean, which part is us and which part is them? You’ve got to give them lots of credit, too. They did a good job and we weren’t as good for whatever reason here today. We’ll go through it and look at it and do all of those things, but to me, we didn’t have the kind of jump we normally do. We didn’t execute with the puck and they outskated us. Give them credit. We’ve
got to be better. We’ll take an off-day tomorrow and get ourselves regrouped for a good Anaheim team.
On the report that Nikita Soshnikov and Josh Leivo would welcome a trade out of Toronto for more opportunity:
I couldn’t tell you. Neither guy has asked me for that. But you can talk to Lou about that if you want. You know, Nikita — in fairness to Nikita — he hasn’t been healthy one time this year. We couldn’t have played him even if we wanted to. I can’t really comment on that part.
But as far as Leivs goes, he hasn’t gotten a lot of opportunities to play. I’d talk to Lou about that though if I was you. I know nothing.
