December 7 morning skate quotes: Darryl Sutter

On the wins over St. Louis and Anaheim:
Tough three-in-four. Just trying to find energy for both games as you go along.

On the New York Islanders:
Top-end two lines, for sure. Got to be able to handle ‘em. If you don’t, you’re going to get in an up and down game, a river game, and they’re good at that.

On St. Louis using bottom-six players against New York’s top-end players:
Well, with the schedule in the west, you don’t really call ‘em ‘bottom six.’ You’ve got to be able to play four lines, and there are nights when you get caught, and quite honest we did it on the weekend two or three shifts also where you don’t get the right guys on the ice just because other guys are bagged, quite honest. You need to have a really good balance right through your lineup out here. You’ve got to trust your players on that, but at the same time sometimes they’re overmatched.

On Ben Scrivens:
I think he’s been off-and-on lately. To be able to win on a consistent basis and to play at a high level is not just the physical, it’s the mental part of it, and when you’re not used to doing that, I think that sometimes it trickles into your game. I’m sure it’s the very same thing that you guys have seen without Nabby, too.

On the challenges related to the pre-game ceremony:
It’s not really that big a deal. I mean, we’ve had enough. Quite honest a lot of times when they’re singing the songs before the game it seems like an audition. You get used to it. It’s California.

On what the team did well to limit John Tavares to an assist in the teams’ last meeting:
Well, I didn’t really didn’t think about that until you said it, but we probably got a little bit lucky. [Reporter: What is it about him that impresses you?] He’s a dominant player in the league. He’s very similar to Matt Duchene in Colorado, and that’s a fact.