October 23 postgame quotes: Darryl Sutter

On the decision to move Anze Kopitar to the point on the power play:
He still plays the half wall and goes down that side of the ice, so not really anything, other than trying to keep him on the power play. The Carter line’s been hot, and we wanted them up front, so the only way to keep Kopi on the first group was put him with Drew.

On Jake Muzzin’s first game back:
I think he was solid. I think there was a little bit there when Braden, because of the seven minutes that he got, that Muzz had to play more, so you get out of your three-man rotation into a two, and I think it caught him there a little bit, but other than that he was fine.

On Jonathan Quick’s performance:
He was solid. Makes the saves when he had to. Covered pucks well. They went to the net a lot. Played the puck well with his defensemen.

On Quick moving into first place on the team’s all-time shutout list:
Well, I think I said it when you asked it last time, it was just a matter of time, and there’ll be many more.

On the importance of taking advantage of an early home heavy schedule:
We have a tough opponent on Sunday. We’ve had to do it in different ways, different start times and different things going on, so I didn’t really look at it as a home stand, I looked at it as we’ve had a lot to deal with this week, and we handled it well tonight.

On Jeff Carter’s power play goal 36 seconds into the game:
We’ve been good the first period every game. It doesn’t always get you the score you want, but we’ve been good every game the first period we’ve played.

On what the team has been doing well during the winning streak:
The league’s tough. It’s tougher to win than it is to lose. So it’s tough. Any time you can get one and know you played hard, it’s good, so to be able to string some together is also good.

On whether the penalty killing streak is a continuation of what he’s always seen:
Not really. We’ve had to put some new guys into that, if you look at it. [Reporter: Toffoli?] No, I’d say on the back end. We’ve used Tanner and Tyler a little bit more this year, but we used them some last year, too. But I think on the back end, we’ve had to move Drew over to play the left side, and Muzz and Marty are killing penalties now, so we’ll just see how it goes. Penalty killing is always about ebb and flow. We’ll have one game and you’ll be throwing darts at us, and a couple good ones and you’re going, ‘Holy cow.’ [Reporter: Is that even more satisfying knowing you have to mix it up a little bit, and they’re still doing the job out there?] No. That’s not satisfying when you have to mix it up. Satisfying is doing it right and killing. It’s not easy to do. [Reporter: I mean not the guys that are actually doing it, but I’m talking about mixing it up and adding different players in there, and they’re still getting the job done.] Well, as you go forward and players get more experience, they should be able to kill. I mean, players have moved on that were really good killers for us.

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