Mike Babcock addressed the media after his team’s come-from-behind 3-2 victory over the Winnipeg Jets on Saturday night, improving the team’s record to 8-3-0 on the season.
On the team coming back to win in the third period:
I mean, they were playing harder than us. We beat them earlier in the week and they were competing at a level where we weren’t quite as competitive as them. We did some silly things. Their power play goal should’ve been down 200 feet. We toe-dragged at their blue line with two D active twice for two breakaways; Freddy stopped one and Scheifele scored on the other one.
And then we made the decision to come out and play right in the third. When we did that, we were fortunate to, in the end, get it to go our way. But it’s a good win for our team. Any time you get a real good team twice in a week and you can get it done, it’s positive.
–
On the status of Auston Matthews, who left the game in the second period after taking a blow to the shoulder in a collision with Jacob Trouba:
He’s got a shoulder injury. They’ll look at it on Monday and we’ll know more on Monday. He’s not practising tomorrow. He won’t be playing on Monday. We’ll know more at that time. We’ll give you an update on Monday. He is not ready right away for sure.
On whether it is concerning that Matthews has battled the injury bug in the past year, including a past shoulder issue:
It’s not the same shoulder. You know, he did his work this summer and got way stronger. He built muscle around his shoulder joints to protect himself. Sometimes things happen.
On the decision to reunite the Patrick Marleau, Nazem Kadri and Mitch Marner line in the third period:
What we did is we just thought we didn’t have any lines. We thought that Hyman and John could do whatever. We didn’t have anything going. We needed a change. We knew that it worked in the past. It kind of gave us a matchup against Scheifele and freed up Tavares’ line a little bit. That’s what we tried to do.
Now, we’ll look at it here tomorrow. We’ll look at it and figure out what direction we are going to go.
On why the team has been able to come back when it has conceded the first goal:
I don’t know if we’ve done that this year at home. Have we done that this year at home? I don’t know if we have. Normally, at home, we tighten up when we’ve given up a goal. That didn’t happen today. I thought we just got determined, which was nice.
I didn’t think we came out and weren’t playing. I thought we were playing just fine. I thought everything was going good. The game was going good. It was two good teams playing and they scored on the power play.
I don’t know… I don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about that.
