March 6 morning skate quotes: Williams, Mitchell

Justin Williams, on Marian Gaborik joining the Kings’ room:
This is, as you said, a very strong room. We have confidence in each other. I think bringing Marian is obviously a hole that management felt we needed to fill and he’s going to come in and do the best he can, I know. I think bringing him in provides a lot of depth – not only in the line he’s on, but trickle through the lineup as well.

Williams, on what he has learned from playing against Gaborik:
He’s an extremely gifted offensive guy. I think we came into the league at the same time. We were drafted in the same year and he’s always got that game breaker label attached to him and it’s well deserved. You look at his stats and see what he’s done, he’s done quite a bit in this league. I’m sure he wants to win just as bad as we do here.

Williams, on skating on a line with Gaborik and Anze Kopitar:
I know he got in late and had some layovers. He had a lot of issues last night. I know he just wants to get some rest. But our message will be just try not to be too pretty out there. I think sometimes when you get a new guy, you always have the polite way you want to pass to you, try to find someone – forgetting that he’s a shooter. That will be our message. Just talk a lot and don’t be afraid to fire it.

Williams, on the five-game win streak:
You want to trend in the right direction. I think we’re doing that. It’s crunch time, there’s less than 20 games left in the season and we have a goal in mind of home ice. We’re going to try and attain that.

Willie Mitchell, on playing with Gaborik again:
I don’t think he knows a lot of guys on the team, so it’s kind of nice to be able to help him out a little bit that way. We had a lot of time together and a lot of pretty good memories too. Kind of both established ourselves as NHL players there and kind of had some success on a team that was just out of the expansion. I saw firsthand what he can do and how he can help our team. Explosive skater and has a quick release. A little bit of a cookie monster. Likes to score his goals. Hopefully he can do that for us.

Mitchell, on the five-game winning streak:
I think we want to keep building on what we’ve been doing. I don’t think about we’ve played our best hockey yet. We’re playing better. This club – as everyone knows around the league – plays really well at home and feeds off the crowd. It’s exciting to be in Canada. So we’re kind of looking forward to a high energy game and have a good first 10 minutes to kind of establish our game and not get pushed back on our heels.

Mitchell, on the excitement of the playoff push:
This is what you play for. We had a little bit of struggles there in the middle of the year, but it seems like always the LA Kings find a way down the stretch to start playing our game and get hot and play our hockey. It’s kind of been that way every year since I’ve been here. I don’t know. It just seems that the bigger the games are, the more pressure, the more our team finds a way to rise to the challenge. So were looking to do that down the stretch to get into the playoffs. And then once we get there, we feel that we’re a team that suites our style of game. So we’re kind of looking forward to it.