Curt Fraser postgame interview over Salavat （Back to back)

24 January 2019

Reporter: What's your opinion about this game?

Curt Fraser: I thought we got off to a little bit of a slow start. But we worked our way out of it. I thought we started fast in the second period and that was us, that was our team. We started to play hard and battle and we skated with a lot of passion. In the third, they came out hard in the third period in the first couple of shifts, got back on our heels a little bit. But then we recovered again, and we started to go. And you know at the end of the night, the shots are close to 40-20, scoring chances are gonna be way out…you know, double what they had. And tomorrow we’re gonna start to have to work on finishing again. And open nets. We had great looks. It certainly was not a little lack of commitment of effort. The guys played a lot harder in the game and they were just dying to win this game. I just gotta find a way to make it easier to find the back of the net for them. 

Reporter: So how's the last 2 periods, like you said, we just couldn’t finish it?

Curt Fraser: I hate talking about stuff like that. Because you know when you’ve given it your all, and you are trying everything, putting everything into these games… Open net, cross crease pass to another open net, and we got our opportunities. It’s not from lack of chances, and their effort was second to none, we are gonna crack it, find a way to win these games, you’ve got to break loose and these guys will score 4 or 5, get us going. But… I like the way we play, I like the guys…their effort, Just gotta find a way to find the back of the net again. And that’s…you know that’s tough. I mean they are a very good team playing, all these teams are real good. And we’re battling hard to trying get back in the mix here. That’s gonna take us scoring one more. We gonna score more than one goal.

Reporter: How’s our power play?

Curt Fraser: I think our power play was OK. We got some good looks again. But we certainly used one. Jeez, 3 or 4 guys had clean looks at the net. Anyway, there is no excuses for it. We got to be better. And tomorrow we will start a game, get ready for Avangard Omsk. I look forward to it. 

Reporter: During practice, I heard that you were really encouraging the guys to take more shots. I’m curious if you were satisfied with the number they were taking or if you were really looking for quality over quantity

Curt Fraser: I think we just need to start a little quicker with it. You know on the first period, we didn’t… We had all kinds of opportunities to get pucks to the net. And instead you know on 2 on 1 s we were trying to make passes to make the fancy play rather than smoke it to the net and get there and battling and get some rebounds and second chances. But you know, like I said, we should have 4 points right now, these last 2 games without a doubt. And for some reason, we just stuck…having trouble with scoring. It happens to a lot of teams. It’s my job to correct it. So I gotta find a way tomorrow to find these guys a way to start finishing more. As soon as we do, with our effort and our commitment to…doing all the things we put into plays now, we’ll start winning, but can’t be waiting too much longer.