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Mike Babcock addressed the media after his team’s 3-2 overtime loss to the St. Louis Blues to close out its six-game road trip at 3-2-1.


On the team’s performance after falling behind 2-0:

I didn’t mind our first right away. As the period went on in the first, they took the period over and played harder and won the battles and won the races. I thought we got the game going real well in the second period and in the third period. Obviously, they had three power plays and we had none. I thought that was a factor in the game. I would’ve liked to have seen us crawl our way back and win the game, but I thought we did a lot of good things here today in the latter half of the game to set ourselves up for success and I was impressed with a lot of our players.

On William Nylander’s play covering for Nazem Kadri down the middle:

I thought good. The first couple of shifts, maybe not as good defensively. In the third period, I thought he was good defensively and offensively and was a factor in the game. We had some good looks where we missed the net and I thought Willy and Kap were two of those guys in that area. I thought he played well.

On when he found out Kadri wasn’t going to return to the game:

When I came in after the first period. I didn’t know what was going on or anything like that, but obviously, he got bumped into. Whatever they do here in these situations…

On his overall impressions of the team’s six-game road trip (3-2-1):

I liked our road trip a lot. I didn’t like our game in Phoenix. Other than that, I liked our game every night. I mean, I would’ve liked to have had a better first here. And yet, you’ve got to give them credit. They’re a good team that is playing well. They’re a big, long team on the back. When you’re long like that, you create a lot of turnovers just because you take up so much space. But I liked our road trip with the exception of our game in Phoenix.

On what the team did to work their way back into the game and get a point out of it:

I just thought, as we got digging in and competing at a high level… I mean, the game is so simple. You work hard and you get rewarded. If you don’t work hard enough, you don’t. When you are playing real good teams, you’ve got to be ready to go right at the start. Tonight, we were not at their level at the start. In the end, it probably cost us a point, but I still like a lot of the things we did today that was good stuff for our team.

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