May 23 practice quotes: Darryl Sutter

On whether he knows when to push guys or when to back off:
Good teams have a great leadership group. Not all teams have that. This team has it, so I defer to them. [Do you still get on them if you’re unhappy?] What does ‘get on them’ mean? That seems to be the topic here the last couple days. [Reporter: Do you get angry with them?] Not very often. The team wins 60-to-70 percent of their games. That in itself is a pretty good achievement in this league.

On his approach to communicating with his players:
Most of ‘em are small town guys, so they don’t need a whole lot of extra attention in our sport.

On whether he ever doubted that Mike Richards had something to provide:
He’s been an extremely good player for us in the playoffs, and at the end of the day, that is how you’re measured. When you’re grading or talking about players – it doesn’t matter if it’s the coaches or another team or the media or management or fans, whoever it is – they should add it all together. You play 82 games, and then you should add their playoff games in. Whenever we’re finished, I know how it’ll be graded. They’ll grade it based on the regular season or the performance. But if you play how many playoff games over a period of time and you’re a significant part of that with the same team, you’re a good player. A really good player. It doesn’t matter how popular you are, what expectations are, or any of that. When your team does that, and that’s the strength of your team, that basically tells you about Mike Richards.

On whether postseason player evaluation is weighed more heavily than the regular season:
I think it depends who the individual is, or who it is, how you’re grading, because if you have young guys, players with very little experience, maybe, you’re evaluating them at that time in terms of how they handle pressure because the playoffs are so different in terms of how players are used and situations they’re used [in][. If you’re a team that sneaks in, and you’re happy to make the playoffs, and after the first round you go, ‘Oh, we were thrilled to make it, and it was a good experience,’ I mean, that’s one thing. But when you start making steps as a team, then I think you evaluate everybody different because there’s so much that goes into it – how much they play in the regular season, and then maybe what they have to go through in terms of injury in the next step. We’ve already played how many games now in the playoffs. So you’re playing every other day. You can evaluate based not on what they did but they can do when it’s all done.

On whether the goalies in this series can be affected by recent performances:
No. Both goalies are back-to-back Stanley Cup winners. They’re not going to struggle with one second of, one shift of that. Both of them are guaranteed prepared to play all night to win a hockey game. The only thing they don’t have to look at is shootouts.