November 19 morning skate quotes: Darryl Sutter

On his evaluation of Robyn Regehr and Slava Voynov since being paired together:
I think Robyn, other than a couple games this year, has been our most consistent defenseman. So we put him with a young guy, and hopefully it elevates their games. Slava, when he’s skating, is an effective player. When he’s not, he’s not.

On his impression of the Tampa Bay Lightning:
Good hockey club. Their record speaks for itself. They’ve been either top-three in the conference or division all year.

On Martin St. Louis playing in his 1,000th career game tonight:
It’s impressive because he’s not just a good player. He’s sort of like Teemu in terms of the whole thing.

On Willie Mitchell saying that he didn’t see many smaller players when he was younger:
I have. I’ve seen lots of good ones. [Reporter: Fleury and Hakan Loob?] Several. Played against lots of ‘em, and I’ve seen lots of ‘em.

On whether St. Louis has changed the game by being “a small guy”:
Nope. There have been lots of ‘em. In facts, I’d seen one on TV last night in the stands, and somebody was oohing and aahing about it. It was [Yvan] Cournoyer. But again, lots of guys that are dynamic. You talk about it because they’re smaller, but it doesn’t mean they’re not great. St. Louis is the whole deal. Off-ice, on-ice, the captain. It’s not one-dimensional. Stanley Cup, All-Star, the whole deal. It doesn’t matter. He’s played a long time.

On how the team breaks the 82-game season up into shorter segments:
Well, you always evaluate as coaches based on road trips, based on homestands, based on quarters, based on this week’s two-week, 20-day break, Olympic breaks. You break it up in lots of different ways. You’re trying to give players tight guidelines so it doesn’t look as long to them, so you break it up. So you get them to evaluate certain parts of their games against certain teams, division games, home games, road games, road trips. Lots of different ways. [Reporter: What was your evaluation after this past road trip?] Obviously it speaks for itself.

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