On whether he might shorten Drew Doughty’s shifts tomorrow, given a reference by Doughty:
He probably got caught in some situations where he couldn’t get off. It wasn’t a fault of his, by any means. He’s going to play 30 minutes. I don’t want to keep saying it, but that’s where we are. [Reporter: Just because it was a season high the other night was the only reason that I was noticing that.] Well, when you’re down in the game, I’d like to have Drew Doughty on the ice if you’re trying to create some offense. And basically the third period, we played in their zone the whole time. He was on the ice a lot. It’s a game where you talk to the analytics experts, and they’ll tell you all the games that we were winning that we should’ve lost, well analytics from the last game are kind of frustrating when you dominate.
On whether he looks for any early indicators of team performance on the road that differ from when the team is at home:
Not really, no. It’s pretty much the same.
On whether Nashville appears to be a “threat” in the Western Conference:
I think their division, if they’re looking just at the division, I think everybody’s bench mark [in] the division would be the Chicago Blackhawks. You look at, say, Colorado won the division in the regular season last year, and you look at how tough the division is, where they are now. I’m not speaking as not knowing the game or an outsider or anything like that, but it’s a tough division, and if Chicago’s your benchmark, then it’s tough. You look at St. Louis, Minnesota, how good of teams they are. Nashville’s got off to a good start, which if you take anything from last year, you go in the conference after the quarter, who was 11, 12, 13, 14, where they finished, you’d have a good idea. If you make the playoffs, you’re a contender.
On the Kings having “tough regular seasons” followed by playoff success:
Not really. Since I’ve been here we’ve had almost a hundred points, and before I came they had a hundred points, too, so I don’t think they’ve had any tough regular seasons. [Reporter: So how are you guys able to sort of kick it to another gear in the playoffs? I mean, obviously, is there something to be said for fighting to get in, and then sort of continuing it?] As I’ve said, if you get in, you have a chance to win. That’s the way the league is now. There’s no difference in the teams. An injury or a call or a mistake is the difference between teams. Everything else is not relevant.
On how different Nashville is from previous seasons:
I think that the biggest things I see are obviously they’ve got a world class goalie back, and they have five new forwards. Their whole first line is one-two-three in scoring, if you look at it, Forsberg Ribeiro and Neal. And then you put the two veterans with Cullen, with Roy and Jokinen, it solidifies their team. You get the goalie and the five guys, it’s basically a transformation of roster. When they talk about coaching change, I’m sure Mr. Poile would tell you that with that comes – if you want to change the style you’re going to play, then you have to change your personnel, and that’s what they did. [Reporter: I did talk to him the other day, and he said if you’re going to make a change, it should be a dramatic change, not a slight change.] Not very often a coaching change makes a difference. Not very often. Personnel does. [Reporter: Well, you did.] Not really. I’ve been around long enough to understand that.
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