Alexei is our leader, on and off the ice. This just makes it official.

The initial news was positive. But it's never a good thing when a guy goes in like that and doesn't move. . . . It couldn't have been fun for anyone to see him go down.

You can't fall behind too many teams 3-0 that early and expect to come back. To do it against Ottawa?

For the first 50 minutes, I thought we played pretty well.

He took a penalty and I couldn't afford to put him on the ice again, and have him take another one.

I didn't think he's played very well the last few games, plain and simple.

He's technically sound, and I think that is a huge factor. There's not going to be a lot of breakdowns to his game technically. Plus, he's a real competitor. Put the two together and it's pretty special.

If you win, you keep your job. If you don't win, you could lose it or you do lose it. I didn't make the rules, Mike didn't make the rules.

I'm very impressed. I can't emphasize enough that the top players bought into the system. Obviously, they're playing hard, obviously, they're playing well. And that sets the precedent for the younger kids.

Not our best effort. We had enough fresh legs in there that conditioning was definitely not a problem. The execution simply wasn't very good, especially on the power play.