May 12 morning skate quotes: Darryl Sutter

On whether he addresses the team or defers to players before games:
I think that our responsibility as captains and as coaches, it doesn’t matter where you are. That’s all the responsibility to reinforce or make sure that they’re clear on what we have to do better or those sorts of things, especially when you’ve got a lot of young guys as a series goes along to reinforce what they do well.

On Jarret Stoll:
I think it’s a strength of our team – we’ve always said that – is down the middle. If we can use those four guys – being Kopi and Mike and Jeff and Jarret – as centermen, we’re always comfortable with that.

On what the Kings did well to “shut them down” over the final minutes of Game 4:
We weren’t trying to shut them down. We were trying to come back. Obviously they were probably more in that thinking than we would be.

On whether he’s still searching for an identity with the fourth line:
Not really. I think the games in this series have been dictated more in terms of – it’s pretty obvious that they want to play Fowler and Lovejoy against Kopi, and then the forwards are depending on time and score. So it’s not so much the fourth line. It’s how it’s spread out, and I think we’ve seen different set-ups in each game, meaning how many minutes guys have played, or whether you’re getting to overtime, or whether there’s not much power play or penalty killing. That basically affects your fourth line how much they play. Because sometimes there are power play guys there, and sometimes there are penalty kill guys there, and sometimes it’s been where we’re up a goal or down a goal so it affects how much they play. I think our identity is clear through our lineup. It’s not so much based on that line.