First and foremost, this was not the way we wanted the game to go. It's difficult leaving the field tonight after the game because the event itself was a really cool experience for all of us.
Skating out onto the ice seeing the crowd jammed packed with Maple Leafs' fans - the Leafs have a ton of fans everywhere and they travel really well. They brought a lot of energy to the building today. In terms of the atmosphere and the environment, you couldn't have asked for anything better.
It's awesome to see how much support we get from all our fans and all the ones that made the trip to the game. It makes it sting that much more because we wanted to go out there and perform for them. We all just want to make sure we thank our fans for making the trip and it was unfortunate we could not put forth a better performance for them.
This was still an experience that we are going to remember forever but of course, anytime we look back on this now, we're going to be thinking of a loss and it does ruin the experience to an extent. But the NHL did a great job putting this event on, our fans were awesome, our team and staff did everything they could, but we just couldn't get it done.
It's important for us to try to put this in the past now and we are approaching it like it's just one game. We weren't going to win 82 games throughout the year and we've lost games before. It's now about how we respond. We know we are getting into the stretch run now and with 23 games left, we know we have to kick it into gear here and start playing some good hockey.
The good thing is we play again in two nights against the Dallas Stars. We'll still be able to see our families who came into town for this game tonight but once we wake up tomorrow, we have to move past this and think of it as just any other game.
