Say What - 'Eager To Play'

Daniil Miromanov on being around the puck when he's on the ice:

"I feel like when you’re trying to play the game the right way, the game is around you and the puck comes to you. I’ve been very excited and eager to play. When you get an opportunity, you’ve got to be excited, you’ve got to be ready to go out there and do your very best. I’ve been trying to do that, be on the puck, being aggressive."

On the chemistry he shares with MacKenzie Weegar:

"We both like the offensive game, you know, Weegs joining the rush - he’s the quarterback on the powerplay - I like to join when I have an opportunity. When MacKenzie is going, I’m staying back, kind of supporting, we don’t want both guys joining the rush. When we’re in the D zone, we’re trying to be as aggressive as we can, and trying to cover each other when an opportunity comes. Trying to be smart with the puck, trying to make good plays and be efficient on the breakout."

On facing Kirill Kaprizov:

"You’ve got to stay on top of him. He’s an extremely skilled player, a superstar. Super-shifty. You’ve got to take away time and space, you give him half a second, he’s going to make a play. But that’s the art! That’s the art of defending. Not a lot of people talk about that stuff. Everybody likes goals and making plays and creating plays, but it’s also an art to be able to stop a guy like that."

Mikael Backlund on the recent success on the penalty-kill:

"We’ve come off two good games, where we’ve done a really good job. At times this year, (it’s) not perfect. So we’ve been struggling obviously - something we’ve talked about all year. It’s nice that we got rewarded the last two games by going 100%."

On the weekend ahead in Minnesota and Winnipeg:

"It’s going to be two tight games, two teams that play really structured and hard. It’s going to be like playoff-type games, tight games, we’ve got to be prepared to battle hard and compete."

On what he expects from the Wild tonight:

"We know they’re going to come out and be desperate tonight, we’ve got to match that and play even better. We haven’t played our best either, lately. Wolfie’s played really well the last two games, and the PK’s been really good, but 5-on-5 I think we can be better. It’ll be a good test for us tonight, for sure."

Ryan Huska on shifting Jakob Pelletier to the top line:

"There’s certain stretches in a game where you’ll move someone around based on how they’re playing. You know, Jakob, I feel like his last game - if that’s what we’re talking about - I feel like he deserved a bump up the lineup in that situation, because he was bringing a lot of energy for us, and I thought they responded well. It just kinda made sense for us to leave him there tonight."

On what he wants to see from his bottom six forwards:

"Like all of our lines, we have to play a certain style always, to be successful, so they have to be hard guys to play against. The one thing I liked, when we kinda made that flip with Pelletier, the Sharangovich-Pospisil-Lomberg connection, they generated some chances for us. I think maybe having a little bit of harder on the wings for Sharan, might help him kinda control the play a little bit more. So we’re hopeful we’ll be able to see that from that line tonight."

On facing the Wild:

"As always, when we see them, they’re a very hard-working team. They’re competitive, they’re physical, they’ve got a great skill set. In our opinion, they’re one of the better teams in the league. For us, it’s always the start. We have to be ready to dig in tonight."