March 31 afternoon quotes: Darryl Sutter

The Kings did not hold a morning skate on Sunday, opting instead for meetings within the team hotel. Darryl Sutter spoke with the traveling media at 12:15 pm local time.

On whether there’s anything emphasized when playing in the second game of a back-to-back:
“You get a little bit more even minutes. That’s the most important thing. We’ve had trouble in periods with any time that we’ve traveled whether three or four of the older guys have tough times if you’re not careful with ‘em. Quite honest, some of the younger forwards have had trouble. It really doesn’t affect the way we’ve played. We’ve beaten good teams. We played good.”

On Drew Doughty’s performance against Minnesota:
“He was wound up….He’s got to still play the score and play the control game a little more. It’s not unnatural for him to. He tries to do a lot, right? And he wants to do a lot. So it’s not a bad thing…He didn’t want to come off.”

On his previous assertion that individual wins and losses aren’t as important as the way he wants the team to play, and Jonathan Quick taking losses very hard:
“Well, because for them it’s based on wins and losses. When you get to this point of the year, it is based on wins and losses, because if you lose, you lose your last game – say I lost my last game. [reporter: So, for a goaltender, it’s different than for a position player?] Well, it depends if you’re on a good team or not. Some teams are used to losing, so I don’t think the goalie bases it so much on that. It’s part of the team thing. But when you’re on a good team, and you’re the number one guy, I think that you base it on wins and losses.”

On the team needing to change anything or “just execute” given the two previous Dallas losses:
“Execution. We had 70-something shots against them, lost two-nothing last time. We thought that game was one of the best games we’ve played. And obviously execution was pretty big – we felt that we got lots at [Kari Lehtonen] and lots of traffic and we spent a lot of time in their zone. We did, in fact, when you break it down in terms of actual possession time. But second, third opportunities – he covers the bottom half of the net as good or better than anybody in our conference. Probably close to Schneider, in terms of covering the bottom part of the net. So, quite honest, you’ve got to get it above the pillows.”

On whether the “70-something shots” comes from Ryan Colville looking at video:
“No, that’s Darryl. Because all those stats that you guys get? Most of them are [road apples], right?…It’s unbelievable when you do it yourself how it actually is. I hope those guys are not getting overtime to do that.”

On possession:
“We’re probably, when you do it all, we’re probably like top three or four in the league in terms of possession time. So when you do that, that’s the only time you have trouble with your game then, if, first off, you don’t have it enough, and then second off, if you’re not taking your shots enough when you do have it. The only chance you have to score is if the puck goes to the goalie, and usually it’s got to hit him once before there’s a goal. Usually…That’s why there’s highlight goals, because it’s easy for the TV guys to pull it, right? There’s a highlight goal. They don’t look at all the other stuff that went into it. [reporter: Sometimes] No, I’d say most of the time. I watch TV, too.”

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.