The expansion Seattle Kraken's early-season appearance allowed an interesting glimpse at the contrasting in-game and post-game presser styles between current Philadelphia Flyers head coach Alain Vigneault and former head coach Dave Hakstol.
Of course, Hakstol is Seattle's first-ever bench boss, with the appearance in Philadelphia serving as Seattle's fourth game in its inaugural season.
The following is provided courtesy of the Philadelphia Flyers Public Relations Department...
Philadelphia Flyers Head Coach Alain Vigneault
Obviously it’s still early in the season, but is this kind of like a road map of how you want this particular team to play?
Well I definitely liked a lot of things about tonight's game, again in our start we made two major mistakes and we got two big saves right off the hub. A breakaway, a tip, and not two but three great saves, and then the one where Carter just threw himself. I mean that’s basically the difference of whether they score and they get a little confidence and a little more energy. If they don’t score, they come right back and the next 10 minutes we’re in their zone and we score three. That was not the whole game there, but without a doubt it set us in the right direction.
What does it do for a team when a guy sticks up for his teammates?
I mean, any team that has success in this league has got that ”'I’ve got your back” mentality, and there’s no doubt that everyone had their back, from Seels doing what he had to do, to Tommer, I mean that’s a tight knit group and that’s what you need to have to have success.
Going back to the first period, is that the difference between that game on Friday and this one where you’ve got a lot of good play, dominant play in the first period, but you don’t get much you get the one goal, then this time you get 3?
Yeah I mean, two different games because in the one on Friday, in my estimation, we got in a lot of trouble in the second period. Tonight, we got those big saves right off the hop. Carter was tested. He wasn’t tested last game really in that first period. He was tested, made the saves, gave confidence to our group, we scored, and in the second period we were able to get two early there. It’s a tough league but to come back from 5 is very challenging and our guys were playing well and I thought we played well for the whole game.
How did you assess the penalty kill tonight?
We didn’t give up much. Our guys obviously have been spending a lot of time, Mike Yeo has been spending a lot of time with our group there that we used to kill penalties tonight. Confident that it’s going to be a confidence builder for our group and we’re going to need to continue.
Alain, did that fight from Seeler really tell you a lot about him?
Right now in our group he’s our seventh defenseman. He usually plays maybe 50 games or more, so he’s going to play for us. Our scouts and our management knew what we were getting. He didn’t play last year, but they identified him exactly how he is. A very good skater, plays the game hard, stands up for himself and his teammates, and that’s exactly what we’ve seen so far.
Seattle Kraken Head Coach Dave Hakstol
There were many scoring chances and after that the team didn’t really much look like the team we have seen in the first three games. I am wondering what you saw from the bench with regards to their energy level and the chances they had after those.
We had a really competitive start in the first ten minutes and we did have a couple of good scoring chances. Like I said we had a good competitive start and we gave up our first goal from 200 feet away which was a theme tonight on probably four of their goals. We got beat up. After that first goal we got back on our heels and we really didn’t regain any consistent push.
Was it a matter of effort or just overall energy?
There are a lot of things it looks like. We were out of sync. We couldn’t put ourselves back on the right track. That is the end result
Was it a tough decision at all to pull Grubauer and make that change?
No, and you know what if I had a do over I would have gotten him out of there one sooner, so no. Not indicative of his play whatsoever. He has played a lot of hockey for us and he has been outstanding.
The guys we just spoke to earlier they were saying the things that have been normal staples of our game: communication, forechecking and all those things weren’t there for us tonight. When you hear your players being that self-aware what does that tell you going forward? Not much really needs to be said on your end or how do you asses that?
That’s a positive thing there is an understanding of that. We have to look at it and we obviously don’t have a lot of time, but we will look at those things and we have to get back into our game really quickly. There is a dropped puck 20 hours from now in New Jersey. I look at the goals we gave up and like I said there were at least four of them from at least 150 feet away that began through a turnover or some other type of play up ice and then those plays ended up in the back of the net. Those are things that absolutely can’t happen.
There is the context that this is a group still trying to figure things out I mean this is only game 4 of the season, game 4 of your whole existence do you think about that context or do you not think about that context?
I think of the perspective that we have a job to do and that’s what we are here to do and tonight we didn’t do that. You have to turn the page quickly yet you still have to take what we can from this game here tonight. Can’t just wipe it off the slate you have to take the lessons out of it. If there is a growth opportunity for our team we have to grab it and most importantly we have got to be a better hockey team tomorrow night.
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