Mike Babcock Played Quotations

He's been a courageous competitor. He probably shouldn't have played tonight, but he perceives this as his team and he wanted to lead them.

Good for him. He's played hard, he's practiced hard and when he's on the ice, he's determined out there. That's great for him. It's fantastic. He should feel good.

I thought the goalie was real good early when the rest of us weren't. He'll be real humble here tonight and he'll say the players played real well in front of him and all that stuff. If you set a record ... you should be proud of yourself. At least for a few minutes until we start yelling at him tomorrow.

We just did a good job on the specialty teams. They (the Blue Jackets) played with a lot of passion and urgency. (But) what do you do when your (the Blue Jackets') power play isn't putting them in, and the other team is?

We have a good team and the guys came out and played hard. With a short group you don't want to get behind and battle back. We talked about being ready right from the start.

To be passing Gordie Howe - holy mackerel! That's unbelievable. That's how good you've been and that's how long you've played. And that's how good of players you played with.

We've played hard as a team and found ways to win. We've done that a lot, and you're optimistic those things can continue.

I wanted to have a competitive training camp. So we went through and put the lineup together. We used Jimmy Nill's advice on all the young guys because I don't know the young guys, and then we tried to get the guys who played in the national league and played on our team to be as competitive a group as we possibly could be, with leadership in all groups.

I liked to see less plays through the neutral zone and more plays around the net, but he (Hudler) played well tonight.

Dan has played real good when you start him on the fourth line and then you move him around. When you put him in this situation ... we'll see how he does. Some guys can't do it. It's up to him.

They did block a lot, but that's no different than the way they played all year. You've just got to find a way to get the puck to the net from a lot of different angles to get opportunities.

I looked at this as a five-game mini playoff series. We played Nashville, Dallas, Carolina, Philly and the Rangers and came out of it winning 3-2. With the exception of the Dallas game, we played real well. When we bear down and have a good focus, we're a good team.

The bottom line is, we didn't play Steve much the first few games he played. Tonight he played, and he was important. He played important. He's ready to go and help our hockey team.