Crawford quotes

On line change: ``We're hoping that Mike really gives them a boost. Mike's playing with lots of confidence right now. He's playing as good as I've seen him play. He's getting five or six chances a game, five or six quality shots, he's hanging onto the puck, he's making assertive plays. Sometimes you can interject a guy like that and he's the exact tonic that the other skill players need.''

On Handzus: ``He’s missed an awful lot of hockey so I don’t think it’s fair for anybody to look and say he’s going to emerge at the level he was playing at the top of his game coming back from injury. Also he lost 15 pounds this summer through an illness so he’s dealing with that too. Mike’s always been a conscientious guy. He’s making a huge contribution to this team right now on our penalty kill and our defensive zone faceoffs and attention to detail in the defensive zone. He’s a very, very committed player away from the puck and that is a nice interjection to our team. We didn’t have a lot of that last year. We all believe Mike can be better, and I think where you’ll see it is last night he had a number of opportunites to make plays and it’s not quite there yet. I sense that is coming and it will continue to come as he gets more strength, his weight gets back to normal and he gets more comfortable with his new surroundings.''

On Frolov: ``Another guy who was hurt for being off two weeks. He’s pushing himself. It's unfortunate because I don’t think Alexander ever worked as much as he worked this summer. Usually when you work that hard you see an immediate payoff. Unfortunately he had that groin strain that set him back. He's a strong guy who's got an amazing commitment and threshold for pain. It took me a lot of time to realize how committed a player he is, because sometimes he can drive you crazy. But now that I understand him more, I understand how his contributions are. Today, for instance, I watched him at practice and he was really strong with the puck and you couldn’t get it away from him. That’s the Alexander we’re used to seeing. We didn’t have anyone really for him to play with last year and he ended up having such a great year. When we see him control plays and be difficult to get the puck off of, it’s coming. Again I do think the two weeks off for him put him behind but he’s catching up.''

On the different scratches this year: ``We’re going to need Willsie. As we keep going here, he’s going to be a part of this. Scott Thornton had a couple of tough pills to swallow sitting out opener. It's a tough thing for veterans. It's almost a right they should have and unfortunately we weren’t able to give it to them.
Occasionally Brady will not play, occassionally Zeiler will not play and occassionally those (veteran) guys will not play. We're going to need everybody to be committed. To play hard when called upon and stay as positive as they can when not called upon.''

On Zeiler against Dallas: ``One thing I really liked about Z is he won a couple of key faceoffs for us. He's takng a little more pride in that direction. I think John can play a little better though. I think John is capable of more and expects better of himself. Sometimes, in your second year, there is a realization that I belong here, I can do this, I can handle the puck, I can make a play. I think he’s teetering on that right now and we’ve got to get him over to the side of I belong.''

On Preissing: ``He’s got a little dizziness and so they’re checking him out here today and they kept him off. I don’t think he’ll play tomorrow, so we’ll prob play Dallman again – who I thought played very well last night.''