Gryba on his heavily iced left shoulder
“A little scratch. Nothing too serious.”
Shattenkirk on his goal and the power play in general
“I think our power play has been slowly improving. We’ve been moving the puck a lot better and getting a lot of pressure on them when we have those loose-puck battles. And tonight was a pretty good example of it. Colby and Alex battled in the corner with their guys pretty well and kind of drew all their guys down. When I got it from Alex, I had a lot of time and I kind of just saw an opening and took the shot.”
Shattenkirk on working with Escobedo instead of Cohen
“So far, it’s been kind of an easy transition. Sean and I have been working well together. I think when I play with Colby, we have a lot of thoughts of jumping in the rush, and sometimes that can take away from one or the other’s ability to be offensive. I think now that we’ve been switched around, it leaves us a little more freedom, knowing that strong defensive players like Sean and Max are back there to kind of hold things down for us.”
Gryba on what he takes away from this weekend
“I definitely don’t think it was a step back by any means. We battled back hard last night. We were down going into the third and battled back. Last night was a great win for us. We know that we can come back from behind. We have enough guys who can make plays and come back and win.
Tonight, guys worked hard. There wasn’t a lack of effort at all. There were just some mental breakdowns, a few bad decisions here and there, but that stuff is fixable. We had the effort all weekend, so that’s a positive that we’ll take out of this and start working with it on Monday.”
Shattenkirk on the team’s three early penalties, specifically his two
“Like any game, when you start of with three penalties, especially coming from me, coming from a leader, it’s tough to get into the flow of the game. I know Eric and I were talking before, and it really tires a lot of guys out when you have to consistently go out there and work at a disadvantage. My first penalty was just a stupid penalty. The second one was just an unfortunate break for me. I definitely take responsibility for the goal that was scored off of it.”
Shattenkirk on the team’s faceoffs struggles
“Obviously, first off, you lose a center like Nick Bonino, it’s tough because he’s a great faceoff guy. You kind of have guys like Chris Connolly who are naturally wingers, or Vinny Saponari, and they have to come in and take faceoffs.
Lowell did a great job on faceoffs with all five guys being intense and being ready and maybe slap at a loose puck and gain control off of that. I think we kind of just have to work on keeping pucks alive, whether it’s one to the corner or just kind of a loose puck in the center’s feet, just to kind of whack at it and gain possession that way.”
Gryba on Lowell’s abundance of chances in close
“They worked hard getting to those areas, and give them credit –– they got there. But that’s something we need to work on. We know we have to address it as a team, especially the defensive corps. We weren’t tough enough to play against tonight. We gave up too many chances in close. We have enough older guys –– we have a senior, two juniors and a sophomore –– who should know how to play this. And that’s our bad. It’s something we have to work on this week, and make sure we come back strong the rest of the year and be strong around our net and not give them grade-A opportunities.”
Definitely agree with Shatty about power plays. The PP has been the quietest, but perhaps the best, improvement this weekend.
BU needs a better reason for face-off troubles than Bonino being out. More guys than Bonino take face-offs, and who’s to say that Conolly and Saponari won’t have to take face-offs even when he’s back. There’s such thing as getting kicked out of the face-off circle.
I think it’s funny that you changed Gryba’s caveman speech into full sentences 😉