Lundqvist said that he personally has not let his mind linger over the Rangers' last game, a 4-3 shootout loss to Winnipeg at the Garden, a game after which Quinn called the Jets "probably the best team we've seen all year." "For me personally it was just the shootout," Lundqvist said on Thursday. "I just wish I could have stopped a couple more shots and help the team get a win. But then you have to move on."
"One of the things that happened in that game, because we'd been struggling a little bit, I thought the mental piece of it was part of the problem too," Quinn said. "They scored that first goal (to get on the board in the third period), and because we'd been in a little bit of a rut, I think our confidence wasn't what it needed to be. You could feel it a little bit on the bench - we hadn't had that feeling in a long time, it was an uh-oh feeling. When you're winning and you're playing well and a team scores, you just shake it off. I felt that first goal kind of changed the complexion of the period.
"A lot of it was puck management, a lot of it was puck support. Once they got that first one I thought our aggressiveness lacked, I thought we backed off, I thought we were playing too cautious."
To that end, Quinn said that in addition to tacking on some extra on-ice time this week, there has been a little extra classroom time as well - up to a point. "We had a good film session today," he said. "It's that balancing act of film work. You want to make it productive - it may make you feel good that you're sitting in there for 25 minutes watching film, but after seven minutes (the players) are thinking about what they're going to have for dinner or lunch. You've got to make sure you manage that and keep their attention and not overdo it."
That is less of a concern for the on-ice sessions, although one thing the goaltender and the head coach seem to have in common is that they don't really know multiple speeds in practice: When you're on the ice, you compete hard. Period.
"We talk about it: The way you practice is the way you play," Lundqvist said. "The way you pay attention to detail in practice, the intensity - there's a lot of things you have to do right in practice to have success in your game. It doesn't change if you play every second day, or if you play once a week. That's how you prepare yourself.
"It's been a good couple of days here - get away from the game a little bit, take a deep breath, and have a couple of days here really working hard. I think that's the key theme here for this week, just work hard and keep repeating the things that are going to help us have success."
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