"Maybe we should pretend every team kicked our dog or something like that before the game - I'm an animal advocate by the way - but it seems like when teams show us up we come back the next time and play a good hard game and get the best of them."
- Blues right winger David Backes on getting motivated.
The star-caliber players at the top of the Rangers lineup will need to be firing on all cylinders in this series in order to compensate for some lackluster depth in areas. And Igor Shesterkin needs to be the King he was in the regular season, too, to beat Carolina.
Finland, Germany, Latvia and Slovakia were all victorious on a Friday that helped set the stage for a crazy final few days of round-robin play at the World Championship.
Stan Fischler looks at the Florida/Tampa Bay battle, Evgeni Malkin's future, television ratings in the United States, the Carolina Hurricanes' arena, Seattle's state of coaching, how to be a Zamboni driver and more.
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