May 23 postgame quotes: Darryl Sutter

On the Game 5 win:
“We were trying to have just a good start, good first shifts out of our players and try and match what they’ve been doing at the starts of games, and we were fortunate to do that.”

On the hitting in Game 5:
“I thought Greener did a good job early in the game for us, especially because of the way that they want to forecheck and they want to get on top of you, so I thought Greener was really effective in that early. I thought Rob Scuderi was really effective in that early. It’s not always about hitting. It’s about absorbing it and being able to make the play in pressure.”

On keeping the Kings “so calm, yet so furious”:
“They weren’t all calm, and they weren’t all furious.”

On Matt Greene’s catalyzing hits on TJ Galiardi and James Sheppard:
“And exactly, those are the ones that stick out in my mind. So that tells you the importance of it, and obviously we didn’t have that late, until, what did we have him? Two or three games, just a few minutes? Obviously his leadership’s important to us, and hopefully he can carry that on. It’s good for him to get a couple of days again. He hasn’t played much hockey.”

On Trevor Lewis winning a faceoff against Joe Thornton to set up Slava Voynov’s goal:
“Well, when Thornton wins faceoff, you look after the first period – I didn’t even know what it was – but every time he wins a faceoff, it’s like it gets extended time in your zone when he does….I think that everybody played against Thornton tonight, and he’s a handful. Everybody has to.”

On how tight the series has been:
“It depends who you’re talking to, but the teams are close enough that the scores so far have been 2-0, 4-3, 2-1, 2-1, 3-0, so I don’t think that there’s much of a gap in terms of the teams. I think there’s gaps from game to game in terms of individual performances.”

On whether there’s “something to be said” about home ice advantage in this series:
“Well, obviously up to this point there’s been home ice advantage.”

On whether there’s anything in particular that has led to home ice dominance in the playoffs:
“I don’t really think there is anything in particular. I think everybody’s going to look at it when it’s over and done and evaluate their whole year and look at schedule, look at all those things, and then they’re going to break [down] how they played at home, how they played away. I think that’s something that’s way down the road and it’s something that seems like a long time ago because everything’s just based on playoffs now. Home and road, if you look at it, not today but going into yesterday, what it was, it was like two-to-one, wins at home and wins on the road. It was basically a two-to-one ratio. It was like 40-to-20. That’s how it is.”

On forcing San Jose into multiple icing calls in the first period:
“That is one advantage of at home. You know what? We’ve seen that in San Jose, too. Both teams want to forecheck. It’s extended pressure, and the way you get it out when you’re tired is to shoot it down the ice, but the problem is you’ve got to come back out and faceoff again and then the other team gets fresh horses out and that happened in the first period tonight and it happened in both games in San Jose.”

On making the game tough for Antti Niemi:
“It’s tough to get shots through to him. I don’t know how tough we were on him, but it’s tough to get shots through. They’ve got four guys, four defensemen that block a lot of shots on the rush and in coverage, so you’ve got to sort of find that puck to the goalie, and that’s the composure that you have to have to do that.”

On a statistic that 79% of teams that win Game 5 win a playoff series:
“I’ve won some and I’ve lost some and I can’t tell you what the series ended up. I’ve been in lots of ‘em, so I couldn’t tell you the importance of it. [Reporter: Got to feel better though, right?] Yeah, it feels good.”

On Slava Voynov’s accurate shot and ability to get shots through:
“Actually, he missed the net tonight. He had three or four great ones before that, and he missed the net by that much, or he had it tipped. And they were opportunities for him that were presented to him where he slides in and we know that they’re there, especially Drew and Slava and Greener on that side. [Reporter: On his goal, he got it past Thornton.] From the bench, I thought it actually hit somebody, but Hexy said it didn’t.”

On killing three penalties:
“When you only have to kill three, then you have a better chance at success. Both teams do.”

On whether changes in the line pairings provided balance:
“You know what? It’s just I think it spreads the minutes out a little better, too. If you look at it after two, that’s probably spread out a little bit better in terms of not so much how many minutes your fourth line had, but how many even strength minutes that the way your top three lines were a little better.

On whether this was the team’s strongest 60-minute performance in the series:
“Yep.”

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