Tortorella's pre-game remarks: Biron, Callahan, Drury, injuries...

First of all, it appears Jason LaBarbera is starting tonight for Phoenix. Ilya Bryzgalof has the flu.

Here’s a quick, inexact, transcript of John Tortorella’s pre-game remarks:

On Ryan Callahan’s broken hand: “I know from talking to Rammer (trainer Jim Ramsay) this morning, six to eight weeks. No surgery. “

Q: “Is Henrik starting, he’s been on a little roll…”

A: “Biron’s playing tonight.. .if I don’t play Biron in one of these games here he won’t play for a full month. As I said, he’s going to play. Our schedule’s a little spread out here. Hank will probably get the next two before Christmas (Flyers and Lightning), so we want to get him in this game here.”

Q: Tough call?
A: “No, it’s a no-brainer for me.”

Q: Without any callups…

A: Todd White, “will start with Christensen and Avery. Dru will be on the right wing, probably take Cally’s spot killing penalties with Dubi, very similar to last night once I settled on some lines.”

Q: Is it bad luck over a couple years with broken bones in hands or are they doing something wrong?

“No, I think they’re doing things right, and they’re doing things some players don’t like doing, like blocking shots. You look at--- and we show tape of other teams blocking shots---and I think there is a mindset in being “big”, we always call it being “big”, not small. I see a lot of players in this league get small, they’re blocking it, but they really don’t want to block it. Our guys want to block the shots. This is the risk/reward you get out of it. I think we’re one of the better shot-blocking teams. I think it’s huge in trying to win hockey games. I’m not sure if it’s unlucky, I just think we do it often, and sooner or later it’s going to bite you. But we’re not gonna change. It’s so important.”

Q: Could equipment improve?:

“The guy you need to talk to and he’s really spoken to the league is Glen. And I don’t disagree with him, I don’t know what the answer is, but some of the equipment…although Cally was hit flush, I’m not sure what you can do, he was hit where Dubi was hit last year---but you look at their skates, by their ankles, how the cuffs on the gloves, they like to feel comfortable with them, but there has to be something better. I don’t disagree with that and I know Glen is really…I haven’t seen him, but I can imagine what he’s going to be like tonight when I see him. There’s something to it….That’s what the gloves are supposed to do. I look at Chris Drury, his first shift, he’s as big as can be blocking a shot, and to me, you’ve got to give him a lot of credit. Our team has become a good shot-blocking team, and I think it’s become part of the culture here. Everybody does it differently, everybody takes the ice away, we do a lot of work to take the ice away around the net, we show tape of guys being small and guys being big. It’s kind of an inner pressure we try to put on a team because it’s huge part of winning.”

Q: More on balancing risk/reward with aggressiveness:

A: “Last night (against Pittsburgh), we made a little adjustment in our game, in not being so aggressive on our forechecking, in losing our third guy, we tried to be more patient in the neutral zone. We’ve had discussions on that; we play a hard game, I’ve used four lines more this year than I’ve ever had in my career, coaching, and I need to get even better at that. There’s gonna be certain times we have to change our mindset on that given night. You want to push as hard as you can, but you want to push smart. We changed our mindset last night on how aggressive we were going to be because they were picking us apart the last time. They knew we were coming and they just threw it by us. We have to think that as we go through. It’s a great question because you don’t want to be backpedalling either, you don’t want to be in-between.”

Q: “Given that, is it not worthwhile to have couple extra guys here?”
A: “If we have someone ready. Right now, I can’t tell you we do. We don’t. They’re just not ready right now. We’re hoping.”

Q: “So no callup in the near future?”
A: “With our games so spread out here, I don’t think so; once we get through this three in four, we just have three games within this space, after tonight, we talked about it last night; in my mind, I’m not so sure. We’ll talk about it again after the game, but we’re so spread out, and it’s Christmas, but I think it has to come into our thinking as we start up our schedule again because we get pretty busy after this little break as far as days off between games.”

Q: “Do you worry that tonight is a trap game…”
A: “It shouldn’t be a trap game because this is a helluva hockey club we’re playing. It’s a fast team, it’s a good team. You look at that Western Conference. I’m worried about the speed, it’s going to be a very quick team we play tonight.”