Q: You like Leon (Draisaitl) at centre but he was with Connor. Why was that?
A: The idea is that if we want to build a team that plays properly the right way, then when we spread it out, we got everybody looking for offence whereas I would rather have it salted in one area and then everybody else checks. If we check, we'll be fine because we're scoring enough goals to win hockey games. Offence isn't the problem. Checking is the problem. We're getting better and better and better at it. We had a great video session today, we had another good practice and we're getting better. I know it doesn't show up on the scoreboard. We're a .500 team. It doesn't' matter how you get there. You win six, you lose six, we're still .500. We know that nine or 10 over is what it's going to take to get into the playoffs. It's more than doable for us if we get better defensively. But it's not going to be doable if we don't get better defensively. What I mean by that is our problems defensively are the way we manage the puck. When we split everybody up, now we got three lines playing risky hockey and it doesn't work. This way, we get, hopefully, some conservative and smart play and manage the game properly. Then our big guys have to score.
Q: (Kailer) Yamamoto didn't skate today?
A: He is questionable to doubtful for tomorrow. (Alex) Chiasson skated today and will skate with the team tomorrow. Hopefully, he'll be ready to play in Los Angeles. (Kris) Russell will skate with the team tomorrow and well see if he's going to play in Los Angeles or Phoenix.
Q: What did you think of your two new defencemen (Alex Petrovic and Brandon Manning) and is there anything that you want to see from them to get acclimated here over the next little while.
A:On Petro, he had a tough assignment. He did a heck of a job. He played 20 minutes and played against Scheifele's line and that was a hard match. I thought he did a really good job. He has to make an adjustment on things that are going on with the way they exit the puck, which is different than what we do. We worked on him hard.
Manning is good. Manning, who hadn't played in a while, we needed a practice today just to get him to calm down because he just wants to kill everybody. In the end, it's going to be good for us. I thought yesterday, if he was guilty of anything, it was chasing contact. We just talked to him today and said calm down and play your position but he's so anxious because he hasn't played in a while.