Brad Richards Teams Quotations

I would say it was one of the better teams I've seen.

From the start, we made it a priority to play well at home. We emphasized before the season that teams coming in here weren't going to have it easy.

That's three shutouts against quality teams that are in the playoffs. It proves to ourselves that we are a good hockey team. I think we started forgetting that a little bit.

That's the way change is. You see it in different teams and players around the league. It will happen to us someday, probably sooner than we can ever imagine. Every team evolves and that's the way teams go.

There are a lot of good teams there and just because you put on a Canadian jersey, it doesn't mean you're going to win. But that's the pride our country has. Those are the expectations and there's bitterness when you don't get it done. There's nothing else we wanted to do except win the gold medal. And a lot of countries, they just want to beat Canada. They played at a whole new level against us.

We can control our own destiny, especially playing Atlanta twice more and Florida three more times, those teams are the closest to us outside a playoff spot.

When you've had a good team for that many years, the pressure will mount. There's only so many teams that can win, so it's not like they're bad players. But they're like everyone else - they want to win this thing.

This is great. We talked about getting closure. I think we all needed that. It's been a while. Not that we're sick of hearing of it, but we've got to move on. It's not our Cup anymore. We saw it tonight for the last time, and now we'll fight like the other teams to try to get it.

It's been one of those years. A lot of good teams this year that did well, their power plays are pretty steady. We, for some reason, go two or three weeks where we can do no wrong, and then we go a month or a month and a half where it's just a battle. We got to figure it out. We have the personnel. If I have the answer, I'd think we'd change things.

It's huge to get that extra point. We don't care what other teams are doing. That's just like a regular two points for us. It's a win. No other way to put it. With 29 games left, we gained a point (on Toronto) and moved up two points on the teams ahead of us.

In the NHL these days, you don't get surprised by too much. When we went and got Cory Stillman , you could kind of see it coming that something might not work out. We still had hopes that they would get both of them signed -- that would've been really good. That's the business of hockey right now, and other teams go through the same thing every year.

Canada is Canada. We all talk about how we could have two teams and we probably could. We all know the next three months of the NHL season will tell the tale.

They are very aggressive. Teams are going to know that I play back there, I'm sure they'll put more pressure on me. Today at practice I skated up front so I think we're looking to take a little pressure off that situation. But I'm comfortable in both spots.