May 29 media availability: Darryl Sutter

On whether Game 5 was the type of game that can “drive coaches crazy”:
Playoffs. Close games. Sometimes you go to overtime. Sometimes you get to play a long time to win. It doesn’t drive you crazy.

On how the team responded to a “slow start”:
Well, the slow start was a penalty in the first minute, 30 seconds in, a tripping penalty. I wouldn’t call it a slow start, but it puts you down a man the first shift into the game.

On the appreciation of the type of “show” that Game 5 was:
You’re wanting to not necessarily trade chances, but to try and score, you’ve got to put the puck at the goalie, and that’s what we did, and that’s what they did. It just took a longer than it normally does. There’s not many overtimes that go that long. I think for the teams to be able to sustain the pace that they did – I think it was 13 minutes before the official timeout was. [Reporter: The whole period took 26 minutes of clock time.] It was basically just using everybody on the bench and telling ‘em to keep their pace up. It was fast. It was a fast overtime.

On how impressed he is with Drew Doughty’s play:
We’re used to it with Drew. It gets asked a lot. I don’t have to say this. I mean, it’s just like hitting the button, and it’s the same answer all the time. He’s one of the best two-way defensemen in the league, and he can play against everybody’s best players, and he can play in all situations, and he can play big minutes. When you go into long overtimes, usually those guys are going to play a lot, and he did last night. You know what? Those guys that are great players have that ability to recover in a hurry. That’s why they are that type of player. They don’t need that minute and a half on the bench. They need the 20-to-30 seconds, away they go again.

On whether Los Angeles-Chicago is the league’s championship, and whether he watches New York-Montreal:
No, I don’t look at it like that at all. I don’t get too far ahead of the fact that we’re playing the defending champion. That in itself is a challenge and maybe we’ve played as well as we can. The other series is obviously a great series. It’s good for me being a Canadian and being a hockey fan to see two original six teams. That’s really cool for me.

On whether he could feel momentum building during Los Angeles’ prior winning streaks:
You know, I haven’t seen that, Cam, in terms of the playoffs at all. I’ve seen momentum during games because if you look at it, not like what you’re saying, I don’t look at it as a six-game winning streak that we had, you’ve got to win four. So, basically, the season’s over when a series is over, and then you reset again. But we’ve also seen in the playoffs where we know – we’ve been down. We’ve lost three in a row, and we lost two in a row and all that, and that’s what happens in the playoffs. It’s not so much the now, but it’s always about your next game, how you can be better. I’m sure that we’re going to have to play better that we were last night, and I said that the other night, and some of you guys looked at me glazed over. It’s true. If you’re not finding ways to get better, or think you can get better, then you’re kind of staying where you are, and at the end of the day, you want to be able to max it out. So if you max it out and you’re fortunate enough to win, then you move on. And if you max it out and you don’t, then you say, ‘Hey, we did our best.’

On whether there’s any “anxiousness” to return to action:
Yeah, we had a late night, and today’s about recovery. It’s not ‘anxious.’ It’s not easy to play games like that. It’s not easy to play every other day with that travel.

On how he’d compare Drew to other players he’s coached:
Well, I’ve coached a lot of and been a part of a lot of good defensemen, playing and coaching. There are guys who have won Norrises, guys who were captains, guys that won championships. There’s several of ‘em. That’s documented. There’s the Chelioses, the Suters, [Dough] Wilson. Kind of go on. There’s lots of ‘em.

On whether he’s pleased with where the team’s energy is:
You have to try and maintain your energy. You have to be able to find it in different ways during the game and from different guys and from the depth of your bench. It’s not just say, ‘Let’s have energy.’ If we did that in this room, and we said that – that’s not the way it works. The playoffs, the farther you go, it’s a mental battle. You look at the teams that are still playing, we’re seven weeks past teams that haven’t done nothing, that played their last games. That’s where your experience and your leadership and your being able to play through injury and being able to set that stuff aside to try and give a quality performance [comes into play].

On the “chess” aspect of the series, and whether he thinks ahead at all:
I think on the bench, you’re like that, Helene. But until you set your lineup, you’re not changing a whole of structure to your game You’re trying to get guys to maybe do something a little different, but I don’t think as a team you are. I think what you do on the bench, you’re always setting up for the next shift or on the fly, what you have to do, that sort of thing.

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