Sunday’s early start requires minor routine tweaks

Because of Sunday’s early start, team preparations are well under way for the matinee versus Minnesota.

“In some ways, today is game day,” Darryl Sutter said. “You’re already looking at the time between morning skate and game time, so that’s kind of the way I look at it. You do a lot of your game prep stuff today.”

As he often does, he’ll be at the rink three and a half to four hours before the game.

“I’ll be up, so I might as well go,” he said.

It’s an early start to accommodate both the Kings and Lakers, the latter of whom will play the Utah Jazz in a preseason game at 6:30. Such is life at Staples Center, one of the world’s busiest arenas.

There’s no morning skate prior to tomorrow’s game, the earliest start time since the afternoon the Kings raised their first Stanley Cup banner against the Chicago Blackhawks on January 19, 2013.

But whereas that afternoon’s ceremony started at noon (followed roughly a half hour later by the actual game), tomorrow’s puck drop will take place shortly after 12:05 p.m.

That placed a heavy onus on today’s preparation for tomorrow’s show-and-go event.

“Today was just an important day for practice, especially after a day off,” Dustin Brown said. “Just getting your habits and your timing back – not that you really lose a whole lot – but you don’t have the morning skate to [prepare]. A lot of times, the morning skate is just for guys to loosen up and feel good about their skates and sticks and get their mind right. With a noon game, you need to show up to the game ready.”

Though there is the stigma that the Kings don’t perform well in afternoon games, that notion was not reflected in their record in day games last season. The Kings went 5-2-0 in games with listed 3:00 p.m. local start times an earlier, bringing the club’s record under Darryl Sutter to 7-7-1 in the afternoon.

“It doesn’t bother me. I’m up either way early. It’s just about getting prepared to go out that early,” Brown said. “As players, were used to 7:30 or 7:00 and we have the routine. But at the same time, we should be able to make adjustments. I know last year or the years past, it’s been a big deal around here. It’s just a matter of getting the job done.”

Players have to be at the rink a minimum of two hours prior to game time, and Brown estimated that most players will leave their houses prior to 9:30 a.m. Really, there shouldn’t be any major change from the time that they need to report to Toyota Sports Center on most practice days, so there should at least be some semblance of normalcy and repetition despite the scheduling quirk.

“We’re up at the latest at 8:00 anyway, for the most part,” Jonathan Quick said.

“I haven’t done the math in my head yet. We don’t usually play noon. We’ll play 1:00 games on Sunday. So it’s a little bit earlier. It’s good, it’s always great when you’re able to win the game. You get a win and then you still have half the day left. You can go to dinner or something.”

The team often goes without a morning skate – either for afternoon games or on the second day of a back-to-back – and Quick is familiar with how he approaches warm-ups on a day in which he’s facing shots for the first time a half hour prior to puck drop.

“When you get out there for the little warmup there, you’re just a little more focused on the details of everything just because you didn’t get that morning skate,” he said. “But for the most part, you have a routine. You get to the rink, you have a routine. You stick with it. Whatever time the game is, it’s always the same for the most part.”