The National Hockey League held its pre-season European media tour earlier this week. Calgary Flames blueliner Rasmus Andersson joined Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman and Jeff Marek on the 32 Thoughts podcast, which went live on Thursday morning, and they have a very revealing, candid conversation.

Here are a few select quotes from a really strong interview. (The interview begins about an hour and six minutes into the podcast.)

“I think the guys are just excited to head back because they know what happened last year and we want to prove everyone wrong, that we are a good team. We lost 17 games in overtime. That hasn’t happened before. If we win five of those, we’re in the playoffs by three, four points. I think we’ve all got that chip on our shoulder this year and we want to prove the doubters wrong.”

“One game that really sticks out for me, we play Boston at home, the best team in the season, right? And win the shots like 50-15, we outplay them by a margin, and we lose in overtime. That’s how our year felt like. We had, what, 50 games, one-goal games, and it’s like we didn’t win those games, so how do we get that extra point and win the game maybe in regulation instead of overtime? We can’t be scared of losing a game. We’ve got to go out and win it in the third and not just, oh you know, take one point here.”

(Andersson continued with his answer, noting that without Johnny Gaudreau and Matthew Tkachuk the team had to work as a collective to win. And he felt they seemed scared to take chances late in games to grab a win rather than playing for the tie.)

“I gotta be better. Everybody’s gotta be better. And that’s the way it is in a Canadian market. You can’t hide anywhere. Everyone knows in Calgary who you are, who you represent and who you’re playing for. So it’s like, let’s embrace it. Let’s play. Let’s have fun. Let’s win games. Let’s not be scared of losing. And I feel like that’s the mentality we gotta have.”

“Let’s put it this way: it’s something you would never turn down. And no player in the league would ever turn it down. And I would obviously love to be the captain of the Calgary Flames. But I feel like we have a lot of good leaders on our team, and whoever Connie and Husk, because they’re such smart persons, whoever they pick it’s going to be the right pick. And I would obviously embrace the challenge, as I just said, embrace the challenge and embrace the opportunity.”

(He continued a bit more, essentially reiterating that whoever is chosen will be the right choice.)

“Backs did it to a point last year. But even he, he said to me, I’m like ‘Backs, you are the captain,’ he’s like, ‘I know-ish, but I don’t have the C so I can’t do everything I want to.’ And it’s such a fine line with that because in our room, we all saw Backs as the captain, right? But for him it’s hard. We see him as the captain, but he’s not the captain.”