Q: As you watched the playoffs, how were you processing it this year having been just one point away?
It was a lot, obviously. Our players, knowing where we were at the end of the year, you’re thinking about, how are they taking things? It’s all about preparation for next year. Starting from day one. You have the offseason, so you’re thinking about how our players felt during the exit meetings, which were great. It seemed like guys if they watched the playoffs would be able to say, ‘Ok, we’re getting ready for this.’ I thought there was a lot to learn for every team in the league. There is no Stanley Cup Winner for 2024 yet, so every team is trying to find ways to get better. If you watched this year’s playoffs, you see a team like
Florida do what they did, knocking off
Boston to start and really reeling it in and playing to their identity. We grew into that, playing with an identity toward the end of the year, especially the last 10 games where the pressure was on and it was must-win situations. I think our players felt that we did play to an identity and we need to come in and work on that right away at the start of the year. To get back to the playoffs, some other things when you reflect, I listen to the radio on the way in this morning and they’re talking about goaltending with concern in relation to July 1 and that sort of thing. I’m thinking if you stop and look at organizations specifically at that position,
Adin Hill didn’t even start at the start of the playoffs.
Vegas now looked at it with all of this information and said we have to re-sign this guy. But at the start of the playoffs, they didn’t even have him in the net. Here’s a guy in their own organization and they didn’t even know how good he was because they played the other guy at the start.
Q: Bobrovsky didn’t even start the playoffs because Alex Lyon was on a roll.
The last three years since they’ve signed Bobrovsky to a $10 million deal, they’ve found ways to not like him. That’s my interpretation. And they start the other guy and in the fourth game of the Boston series they go to him and he doesn’t come out of the net. I hear some of the stuff about our goaltending and you look at some of that stuff, it’s not unnatural to be worried about this. Every other team is worried about it. At the end of the day, you know, our approach to it and my approach is, ‘Stick with the guys.’ We know these young guys are going to have situations and grow from it. I’m getting off topic a little, but it’s all of these things that go through your head as you think about next season.
