December 8 practice quotes: Darryl Sutter

On Matt Greene and Trevor Lewis’ status for the upcoming road trip:
They’ll both travel….Trevor’s still a ways away, and Greener could be available.

On Alec Martinez’s “opportunity”:
Opportunity to play. Simple. He’s a teen-minute player. If you start pushing him more into that, then it doesn’t benefit our team. He’s playing on the right side right now, so he plays behind Drew, who plays 25 minutes, and he plays behind Slava, who plays 20-plus. So if you add it up and if you’re doing 60, then he’s a 12-to-15 minute guy, and you need quality in there.

On whether defensemen are easier to move from left-to-right or right-to-left than forwards:
I think you see more left-handed defensemen can play their off-side. Not many right-handed defensemen, for whatever reason.

On teams coming west and learning about the challenges of the schedule:
Yep. I learnt a lot about that in San Jose, so it’s not something I’m picking up here. I think that you have to be able to manage your bench different, manage your team different, recognize your schedule, make sure you’re looking ahead, make sure with this group here – because they’re such a young group – make sure that they’ve got a handle on not just the next game, but the night before, and what they do to prepare. It’s a big adjustment.

On what has been impressive in Martin Jones’ game, other than the two wins:
Well, it’s obviously two different approaches. First, back to back games, you need your goalie to come in and do a good job for you, because you’re not always sure how your team’s going to respond for the whole game. He did a really good job in Anaheim, and then last night he was really solid. He didn’t have to be great, but he was solid coming in, especially in the first period.