Say What - 'Too Little, Too Late'

Rasmus Andersson on the loss:

"I don’t think we played too well with the puck. We were a little sloppy with the puck tonight, and that cost us. I thought we defended well. The last five minutes of the second, and the third - maybe - we were pushing. Little sloppy tonight, just couldn’t get the fore-check going first 30 minutes of the game."

On the third period and the need to bring a 60-minute effort:

"If we play like we did in the third, we’ll be fine. We’ve just got to find that desperation in the first two periods. It’s almost like a complete opposite from the last two games … We’ve got to figure out how to play 60 minutes, it starts with us in the leadership group. You gotta look yourself in the mirror before you can look somewhere else. We’ve got to start getting better and lead by example."

On Mikael Backlund's absence:

"It sucks. You never want to be injured. For us, we’re losing our captain, we hope obviously he’ll be back sooner rather than later. It’s up to the five of us in here to get the boys going. We didn’t do a good job of that today, and we’ve got to bear down; we’ve got to be ready to play come Monday against Toronto."

Blake Coleman on the 4-2 setback:

"We didn’t quit. I liked the response in the third, I thought we were the better team in the third. It was just too little, too late."

On the forward group working without Backlund and Connor Zary:

"The lines got put into a little bit of a blender, just trying to find some sort of spark, some sort of chemistry. I think we got better, I thought we got the lines going in the third … had chances to get ourselves back in the game."

On shutting down the Avs' big guns but still falling short:

"Still sour. I want to win that game. You can’t let anybody score on their team. We just gave them a couple too many free looks. I think it just took us too long into generating offence; , three shots halfway through the game isn’t gonna get the job done. Great push at the end, but start making plays earlier."

Morgan Frost on the difference in the game:

"I think it’s pretty evident. The first half of the game, just too slow, not enough energy. They’re obviously a really good team, but we can play with them when we play how we did at the end of the game. You’ve got to play a full 60 minutes."

On playing a shutdown centre role:

"That hasn’t always been my game, but it’s probably the thing that I want to work on the most, is being able to be trusted in those situations, not having to be hidden. I want to be out there at the end of the game if we’re winning."

On how the team can get more depth scoring:

"Honestly, I think to some extent it’s just simplifying. You’ve got to get some greasy goals, and I think once you get that, you get the confidence going. It’s no secret, we’ve got to score more goals. I take a lot of ownership on that. I’m put in offensive positions, I’m on the powerplay, so it’s something that I’ve got to get better at."

Ryan Huska on the 4-2 loss to Colorado:

"I thought we had a good push in the third period. I didn’t like our first two periods. I thought we had too many guys that were not fully into the game tonight - like maybe three-quarters to start with - then halfway through the game, I thought we started to get more engaged."

On the slow start:

"That’s the frustrating thing for me, more than anything, because I felt like they were ready to go today. I felt at times, they respected them way too much early in the game. That was pretty evident to me, because the detail - the structural side of it - was fine. But it was like people were waiting for something to happen … and in the third period, they just played. Trust your game, trust your instincts, and go play. And that’s what we did in the third, but too little, too late."

On the need to play complete games down the stretch:

"You have to play 60 minutes. If our team doesn’t, it’s hard for us to win. If we put that third period tonight for the first two, we’re a hard team to play against, and that’s the way we have to be. You don’t come to work, and work for a third of it, it just doesn’t work that way. We have to get better, for sure, at that area quickly. We have another tough road trip coming up, where we have to make sure our starts are good, we have to make sure the middle frame is good, and we have to most definitely make sure the finish is good."