The more confident he has become, the more he has communicated with teammates.
“His chest is sticking out,” McLellan said. “He feels better. I notice it the most during the games, TV timeouts, when he comes to the bench, and he kind of takes charge. ‘Hey, D-men, be aware of this. If I get it here, this is what I’m thinking. They’re looking backside.’ Just his interaction … around the players has gone up immensely. He’s now got leadership qualities too that took a little while to come to fruition, but it’s happening.”
Osgood said the team has played better in front of Gibson largely because of Gibson.
“I think the team was OK early, not great, but I do think everything started with him making big saves and playing great for the Red Wings,” Osgood said. “You saw the confidence build for them. … When you go on a run for that amount of time, it’s for real.”
Gibson makes it all sound much simpler. In an 82-game season, you’re going to have ups and downs. He had a bad start. Nothing’s changed.
“I’ve been doing the same thing for 13 years,” Gibson said. “I mean, obviously, sometimes it shows better than others or this and that. But I’m just going out there, competing and hopefully giving the team the chance to win every night. That’s all we can do.”
He knows he must keep it up too.
“I always want to be consistent night in and night out, and I wasn’t early in the year, and I just had to figure it out,” he said. “That’s kind of what it is. But obviously, there’s still a lot of season left, and we can’t be really sitting here satisfied. We’ve got to stay hungry and just keep doing what we’re doing.”
