Ted Nolan: "I’d rather win ugly than lose"

"Sometimes you win some ugly ones and I'd rather win some ugly one than lose one so it was a good lesson. We need to get that emotional component into our game all the time and not just when you are playing games like Russia, Sweden, one of those so called top teams. We didn't bring this in the game against Italy," said Nolan.  "We are very happy with the result. Sometimes you get the result you are looking forward to, sometimes the process isn't going the way you wanna see it."

In the last minutes of that game, the Canadian native used his third and fourth line on a powerplay, trying to rest his first lines. "Yes, they played a lot of minutes. I don't think the players didn't try but sometimes the emotional feeling isn't there. They competed really hard against Russia, they competed hard against Germany, we practiced hard before the game against Italy and the energy wasn't there. So today they were having some rest to recharge their batteries."

The Latvian team is full of young players who put in some very good and promising performance. "Indrasis played another good game, Ronalds Kenins played a good game. The one thing about this kid, he competes all the time. I've come to really admire the spirit he plays with. We played three games and I haven't seen him took one shift off. That's why those kids are the top players," explains Nolan.

 

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