February 15 postgame quotes: Columbus

Head Coach Todd Richards, on Friday’s game:
“We didn’t win a lot of battles tonight. There was more urgency in their game than there was in ours. As far as winning those 1-on-1 battles in the offensive zones, we were spending more time in our defensive zone, using up our energy.”

Richards, on whether penalties in the first period set the tone for the game:
“I really don’t think that set us back.”

Richards, on disappointment over suffering a setback in developing an identity:
“Yeah. It’s playing 60 minutes. It’s playing the way we need to play. And what troubles me is we talked about it, showed video, and we come out and can’t get to that point. We had segments of the game where we were doing it, but the full commitment to it for 60 minutes – it was a 2-1 game, we’re still one shot away and not playing our best hockey – but for us to have success, everyone has to do it. Everyone’s got to be committed. We can’t be turning pucks over like we did. Again, that’s going back to the start of the year when we were turning pucks over. Just some puck poise and those types of things.”

Brandon Dubinsky, on the team’s struggles:
“We didn’t have enough push back. We certainly didn’t help ourselves. We made some turnovers that made us spend too much time in our defensive zone. Didn’t allow us to play enough offense. The shot total reflects that.”

Jack Johnson, on the team’s challenges:
“I think the Kings played a great defensive game . They did a good job keeping us outside. Give credit where credit is due. It’s up to us to create more offense at the end of the day. When your forwards help you on defense it’s huge. Then it’s five people playing defense opposed to two. The Kings do that exceptionally well.”

Rules for Blog Commenting

  • No profanity, slurs or other offensive language. Replacing letters with symbols does not turn expletives into non-expletives.
  • Personal attacks against other blog commenters, and/or blatant attempts to antagonize other comments, are not tolerated. Respectful disagreement is encouraged. Posts that continually express the same singular opinion will be deleted.
  • Comments that incite political, religious or similar debates will be deleted.
  • Please do not discuss, or post links to websites that illegally stream NHL games.
  • Posting under multiple user names is not allowed. Do not type in all caps. All violations are subject to comment deletion and/or banning of commenters, per the discretion of the blog administrator.

Repeated violations of the blog rules will result in site bans, commensurate with the nature and number of offenses.

Please flag any comments that violate the site rules for moderation. For immediate problems regarding problematic posts, please email zdooley@lakings.com.