PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – The talk before practice on Wednesday, the mood after the game on Tuesday. It was if the Pens were coming off a loss instead of a key win two days ago.
Now, this organization will likely never win another game giving up six goals in the third period. As they prepare to face New Jersey again on Thursday night, they reflect and learn how to keep that from happening again.
"A lot went wrong," said head coach Mike Sullivan after a few hours to process the game. "We've had a discussion with the players on our thoughts on how we can improve. What we can learn from it. So that type of circumstance doesn't happen again."
"You could tell that no one was pleased with how things ended there," said forward Jeff Carter Wednesday. "We talked about it this morning. It's a learning experience for sure. You think about it. You think about what you could have done differently. You have to learn from it and move on."
"Some of the mistakes were physical, but they were the result of a mental relaxation," said defenseman Mike Matheson. "Subconsciously we let it get away. It was a by-product of not being 100% focused."
"For me it's more symptomatic of the mindset more than anything," Sullivan said. "That's the most important aspect. That was part of some of the discussions we had with the players. It's not like this group doesn't know how to play and doesn't know the details of the team game that gives us the best chance to be successful out there."
"We've had a lot of success playing the game a certain way. It's a matter of making sure we get back to the discipline of the details and a certain competitiveness that gives us an opportunity for success."
"We've talked about these details daily. All year long and so the players know what they are when we talk about it. Now it's just a matter of making sure we hold one another accountable to that standard."
"It's important that we grow and get better and we learn through the experiences. But also don't hang onto them and dwell on them, positive or negative. We have to have a resilience in our mindset to allow some of the things that don't go our way to affect our performance going forward."
"We got another big game (Thursday)," Carter said. "Another two points on the line. It's in the back of everybody's mind that it doesn't happen again, that's for sure."
Sullivan revealed after thursday's morning skate that Kasperi Kapanen will be a game-time decision and in other good news, Brandon Tanev has begun skating on his own.
