"It's been an adverse situation for us and a lot of the time your true colors come out," head coach John Hynes said. "What I mean by 'true colors' is our culture. The results haven't been there but if you have a strong brotherhood and character people, guys who care about each other and care about the jersey. People that care about the people in this organization, you're going to push through the right way in these times. It doesn't mean you're going to win all the games, but there needs to be a standard of performance and effort and togetherness that we need to have. I believe we have that in our room, we just need to make sure we stay consistent with it."
One particular player that has taken the challenge is Pavel Zacha. In three games since his return from injury, Zacha has four points which includes two game-winning goals. At just 21-years-old and in his third season in the NHL, he hopes he can continue to contribute in these final five games. For Zacha, it's a matter of maintaining that consistent level of play, which for him, has a lot of focus on what's going on between the ears.
"It's a lot mentally, if you're mentally ready to play games," Zacha said. "In practice, you have to practice hard. There's not that many practices like in juniors when you don't feel good, you can have four days of practice and then get back at it. Now you have to start feeling it in the games, so I think mentally the hardest thing is to the focus on every game. You have a game almost every second day, you have to focus on making sure you're ready to play every other day."
Zacha is on pace for a career year with 12 goals and nine assists in 56 games played. His current 21 points is four shy of his career-high 24, that he attained last season in 69 games.
"He's a guy that's had some ups and downs," Hynes said after the team's morning skate in Detroit. "It's nice to see him with that mindset and nice to see him play the way that he's played the last few games. He's gone through some struggles, but we see a lot of potential there. He's great kid. He's great to work with and he's worked really hard coming back. Hopefully he can continue to play the way that he's played. And going into the off-season feeling really good about his game and all of us feeling really good about him."
