SAY WHAT: BITTER END

MARK GIORDANO ON SERIES:

MATTHEW TKACHUK ON DISAPPOINTMENT:

"We wasted a good opportunity here. We don't know if guys will be back or... you just don't know. And we had such a great group in here. No team ever has the same guys the next year. It feels that we wasted a great opportunity with this group, but this is a group I wanted to win for, we all wanted to win for. Going out in April is awful. It's going to be a long summer."

BILL PETERS ON JOHNNY GAUDREAU:

"He was all over it. Even on the one - it was 3-1 and we challenged - it was halfway through the game, and if we win that challenge it goes to 3-2. We don't and it stays 3-1. So, halfway through the game he scores a goal and it's disallowed, and he had a penalty shot, which is the right call, I think. He tried. I'm telling ya, he tried. He had more looks than he's getting credit for in the series. For our team, the more we tried, the deeper the hole we dug. We started to press a little bit and it didn't work."

GAUDREAU ON BREAKWAY CHANCES:

"Yeah. It sucks. Thought I had him beat on the penalty shot. My stick hit his skate. I was going to slide it in far side, but my stick hit his skate and I lost the puck. Next one, he made a nice blocker save. It sucks but that's the way it goes. He played well."

GAUDREAU ON BEING ELIMINATED:

"It sits with you for the rest of the playoffs. You hear about other teams playing games, you're obviously watching. It sits with you for a while, probably until the end of the playoffs. It's going to be a long couple months."

TRAVIS HAMONIC ON 'EMPTY' FEELING:

"We just weren't good enough. Obviously. It's frustrating. We believe in this group, we believe in our players and the people we have in this locker-room. It's frustrating to be standing here right now. These aren't the conversations we want to be having right now. It's a crummy feeling, an empty feeling."

PETERS ON WHAT CHANGED IN THE PLAYOFFS:

"Some of the strengths that we had during the regular season weren't strengths in Round 1. I can't explain it to you why some of those went away. It will be interesting when we reflect and look back to try and find some answers. We tried to change some things, lineup-wise, to try and change some matchups on the MacKinnon line and we didn't have an answer."

SEAN MONAHAN ON TOUGH LOSS:

"It sucks. We had a good team here and we didn't show that here through the five games. That cost us. Smitty played great, kept us in it, but they played better than us and that's why the result is what it is."

MONAHAN ON TROUBLE CREATING OFFENCE:

"I don't know. We've got to be better. We've got to produce. Your top guys have to be your top guys, especially in the post-season. We didn't do that and we're a little ticked at it. It sucks."

MIKE SMITH ON AVS:

"Everybody that makes it in (the playoffs) is an NHL-playoff team and they deserve to be in there. It's a hard season to get in the playoffs, for one; it's so competitive and once you're in there, anything can happen. I didn't think we played our best consistently in this series and you have to be your best if you want to move on. You can't move on just being average. They were the better team and they deserve some credit. They snuffed us out offensively and did a good job to shut down our top guys. You've always got to remember that there's two teams on the ice, so you've got to give them a lot of credit in that way that they contained us."