Post-Game Quotes- Game 1

Tim Thomas: "Last year was my first NHL playoffs, and I thought I was ready. I was still able to play well, but as far as to handle the crowd, I thought I’d seen it all – you know, world championships, that kind of stuff. But last year, I think the energy of the crowd overwhelmed me a little bit, so this year I made a conscious decision to ignore that. I mentally prepared myself as well as I possibly could, not to get caught up in that. It kind of sounds silly, but I can’t really enjoy myself and let myself go with the crowd and play to the best of my ability, so I kind of had to shut it off. 13 seconds left, that was the first time I really got to enjoy myself with the crowd. The beginning of the game didn’t affect me. When we had a two-goal lead with 13 seconds left, I was celebrating along with the crowd."

---Experience is always key in success in the playoffs. The fact that most of these Bruins were in the playoffs against this same team last year is only beneficial to them. Like Thomas said, he was overwhelmed a bit last year, now he knows what to expect and how to handle it all. I think that goes for a lot of guys on this team.

Milan Lucic on responding to Laraque's trash talk: "A little bit back and forth, but nothing too… yeah nice words. ‘How you doing? How was dinner last night?’ You know, those type of things.

--- Got to love the fact that Laraque can't get in these guys heads. These young guys are well tempered out there and pretty mature for their age. There is no doubt that the maturity level is high on this team, regardless of age.

Marc Savard on the play of Kessell tonight: "Well he's our top scorer. Any time you can get him out there you want to get him out there and I think our first power play at the start of the game we were moving it around but we just weren’t getting any shots and obviously Phil’s the guy that shoots it. I think in the third there it was a good example he caved down on me and two guys went to him because he’s that dangerous from where he was going to be and Monster [Chara] was waiting back there with his stick touching the roof and I sent one back and it was a great shot by him.

---yep, mentioned this earlier I think. It just makes sense to put your top scorer on that line, right? The more shooters, the more the defense has to commit, opening up the ice for "Monster".

Georges Laraque: "For us it was definitely a good loss."

---Ah yes, the words of a loser...