Barry Trotz Second Quotations

I didn't like the way we played our game. The second period killed us. A lot it was due to face-offs. It started there. Structurally, we didn't play intelligently and that bothered me. When you do that against a good team like Atlanta, they will tear you apart.

I thought Mike played really well, especially when we had some good chances. When they got the lead in the second period, he came up with a few big saves. Then early in the third, he had some big saves, especially on the 5-on-3 that we weren't able to capitalize on.

I think people probably sell him a little short on that end of the ice. He's got good skills, and he likes to jump up in the play. I could certainly see him on a second power-play unit.

We had a couple of big saves from Chris Mason in the third. We had bang-bang goals in the second period and Hartnell came up with the big goal at the end. It was a key goal for us. They sort of had us on our heels, they were coming hard, but we were able to get the big goal tonight when we needed it.

I learned a lot about our character. We didn't back off. We didn't get off to the start we wanted. In the first period ... we took some undisciplined penalties and we didn't skate. But in the second and third periods we did skate and we played the way we have been playing and it showed in the final result.

We spent a little too much time in our own zone. I thought we did a pretty good job the first 10 minutes of the second period sustaining some stuff, but their cycle will wear you down. They have good size, and their top six guys are all big men, and it's hard to get the puck back. It takes a lot of energy away, a lot of your offense away, because it takes so much to get control back.

It's good for our team to be able to come into Detroit and play like that against an extremely good team. I can remember the first and second - and even the third and fourth - years of this franchise, we really had no belief that we could come in here and win.