February 3 morning skate quotes: Chicago

Patrick Sharp, on Los Angeles:
You look at the numbers or the stats or whatever you want before the game and it doesn’t faze us at all that San Jose and then these guys are a low scoring team. Every time we play both teams – especially LA – it’s a tough game. It’s hard to score goals, a low scoring game and really a playoff style game. We don’t really care what’s happening with them today or tomorrow. Tonight is going to be a tough game, we know that.

Sharp, on controlling the pace of the game:
We have to find our legs early on and use our speed. It’s a key a key to our game when all five guys are skating together and it allows us to get to pucks first and keep it. When we have it, we usually make good plays and smart decisions with it, but it’s just working to get open for each other and getting that puck back.

Bryan Bickell, on Los Angeles:
They’re going to be coming out all pistons ready tonight. So, it’s going to be an interesting game. I know the circumstances – they’re still a great team offensively. They’re a checking team, so hopefully I can bring some out of my game, but we’re going to look around this room and play our game.

Joel Quenneville, on Los Angeles’ offensive struggles:
It’s a hard working team. They play a hard game, especially in this building. They come at you and not a lot of time and not a lot of space. They play a tight checking type of game anyway. So we have to be ready for them. They’re going to try to funnel and put everything at the net. They go to the net as hard as anybody in the league, so I expect a real hard type of game. We thought the same way with San Jose and we saw how that is exactly what happened. We expect tonight is going to be a real comparable game to the other night.

Quenneville, on winning the puck possession battle:
Make them play in their own end if we can. Advance the puck, get through the middle of the ice, make their D turn their back as best as possible and keep the puck ahead of you. It’s a team that attacks well and they’re simple in their game, but they just like to put pucks at the net and knowing that when we are in our end – we’re going to have to defend and be ready to do a good job about it.

Quenneville, on managing his players’ ice time before the Olympics:
I think every game, we’re playing to win that game. You’re aware of what’s coming down the pipe – no matter if they’re going or not and I don’t think that’s differentiating or making our minds change going into ice time or who’s going to play with who or how much they’re going to play. It’s more dictated by the way the game is. We’ve had a good trip here as far as how we’ve played. We played the right way. As we come out of it, I will be a little bit more concerned on where the guys who played over there are at as far as their energy and their emotional part of their game. So we’ll measure that more on the other side of it, but these three games we’ve got – are kind of like this whole road trip here – we’re playing to win one game at a time and I think everything else will take care of itself.

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