October 2 practice quotes: Brown, Doughty

Dustin Brown, on the excitement of beginning the season:
I think this time of year is always exciting. It’s part of the reason you want to get back on the ice. Our expectation within this room is a Stanley Cup. A lot of us have gone through that process together, so we have that in our back pocket. It’s really about putting the work in each and every day.

Brown, on how he feels, and whether he’ll play tomorrow:
Yeah, I mean, that’s Darryl’s call ultimately. But the way we’ve been practicing and the way I feel, I’m ready to go. It’s exciting to get the season started.

Brown, on controlling the emotions in the season opener:
I think we have a pretty veteran team in the sense that a lot of guys have been in the league for some years now. It’s about finding the right emotional level. The first road game, we’ve got to have a road mentality. I think we’re a competent group of guys…The home opener you’re going to have to keep your emotions more in check because you have the crowd behind you.

Brown, on whether he still gets “butterflies” for the first game of the season:
Yeah. I mean, not quite like it was in the first year. But I mean, they’re always there the beginning of the year.

Brown, on how Darryl Sutter runs practice and his daily regimen:
It really depends. If there are some issues in our game, we’re going to address them in practice. We have a lot of drills – you’d have to ask him – but it seems like we have a handful of drills that we continue to do every day, and it’s just a habits drill –breakouts and regroups, and just hammering home the positional part, but I’m sure if there’s issues in our game, whether it’s forecheck or defensive zone, we’ll probably pay a little extra attention to that. With the day-to-day and the schedule, it’s about me getting on the ice and getting some reps in.

Brown, on how the team practices special teams:
Well, PK, it’s hard to practice, because what makes a PK successful is probably something you don’t want to do in practice in blocking shots and getting in lanes and that sort of thing. So that’s a tough one to practice. But power play, I always think the more you practice, the better – even if it’s just puck movement. I think that’s the one thing you’ve got to continue to practice throughout the year.

Drew Doughty, on whether he’s excited for the start of the season:
Yeah. We’re just excited to get the season started. Both arenas –Minnesota and Winnipeg – they have great fans there. The barn’s going to be rocking, especially for home opener. We’re just excited to get in there, get the season started, and hopefully get four points out of this trip.

Doughty, on whether he has to control his excitement early in the season:
Yeah, sometimes those first couple games you almost have to kind of relax a little bit. You almost get over-amped and too excited, and when you’re too excited out there, the hands are just a little jumpy. The feet are a little jumpy, so definitely going into the games we’re going to have more than enough energy, and we’ve got to use the energy on the ice and control it properly.

Doughty, on channeling the excitement, and whether “shorter shifts” are key:
I think shorter shifts, for sure, is one thing. We need to make sure we get our feet under us. Everyone needs to be fresh. You don’t want to be getting caught out there. Even though we had a hard, long training camp and did a lot of work, it’s still not going to be the same as it would be halfway through the season. So that, for sure. We definitely have to pay attention to our systems because that’s one thing that’ll help us win games, and if we’re able to do well on special teams and in our systems, we should win.

Doughty, on training camp giving way to the season:
Camp went well. I thought the team progressed as camp went on. We had a couple bad games right off the get-go, but after that we were pretty sharp. I think everyone’s just happy training camp’s done with, and getting the season rolling.

On whether he sets personal goals:
I think I’ve kind of focused the last couple years a lot more on my defensive end. Not that I’ve lost my offensive talent or offensive touch, but I just didn’t work as hard on that, so this year I’m really trying to make sure to kind of even the two out. Work hard on both, and kind of get back to putting up more points along with playing really good D.