November 26 morning skate quotes: Darryl Sutter

On the team emphasizing a strong start tonight:
I think the road record is just something that – we’ve had four overtimes, right? Normally you don’t go 0-and-4. To me, the road record has no bearing on that at all. If I look at the starts we’ve had – you’re not going to have always a great start, but if you’re just looking at it based on the road, I mean, we lost in overtime in Phoenix, we had a good start. We lost in a shootout last night, we had a good start. In Anaheim, we went through some – hey, tough building – some ups and downs during the game. So, you know what? The start part of it, what does ‘a start’ mean? Does that mean the first shift, the first period, the first five minutes, the first power [play]? [Reporter: Or setting a tone or something, maybe.] Every team has pretty much the same identity now, like this team is supposed to be a big, tough team, or this team is supposed to be a big, fast team, well they’re all within two or three pounds of each other, and their goals against is all pretty much within a half a point. It’s so even. I mean, ask Daryl Evans right there. Every player that sat in the room before the game, what’d they say? ‘Let’s have a good start.’ [Reporter: Pitter patter, let’s get at ‘er.] Always, let’s have a good start. So, what’s a ‘good start?’ A lot of times it’s how your goaltender plays, or your top players play, or if there is a match-up, that’s to me the way I see it.

On whether home-road special teams splits are arbitrary:
I think you’d have to look probably at penalties taken or penalties drawn more than anything. I mean, there are always guys who are better home players than road players, but how much that affects special teams, I’m not really sure. I really don’t have a really good feel on that. I mean, I liked our power play last night, and they didn’t score. So if it’s just about your power play, well, if you think the power play’s supposed to score every game, then you should be a coach because that would be a record if the power play scored every game.

On whether Brayden McNabb had one of his “better road performances” last night:
He’s been fairly consistent. I think in the Dallas game, that pair was on the ice for, I believe, four goals against. Last night they were on the ice for the big goal against, the Gaustad line scored against them. I’m not going to pick guys out and say it was their best game of the year, that’s for sure. [Reporter: Except for maybe Drew.] Yeah, it’s funny, I was just looking at that just now with Suter and Doughty. [Reporter: They’re three seconds apart, I think.] But the difference? Minnesota hasn’t played an overtime game, so if they played an overtime game, he wouldn’t come off the ice, so if they went the whole overtime, then he’d have that much more. You know, we’ve played those overtimes, and they went complete, all the road ones. So Drew’s probably been out there. It’d be interesting to see what his overtime minutes are.

On the Nashville ice crew’s efficient work after the third period last night:
Well, we talked about it all training camp. The guys who matter – which would be the players and coaches – about that dry scrape was sort of took everything away from the game, and we never talked about running the Zamboni down for the shootouts. We were adamant that we didn’t want any of that stuff, well it took ‘em two months to figure it out, and then they took it out, and now they don’t have the dry scrape for the shootout. Now when guys go to make plays, they might as well just do what Tyler did, right? What do we know? [Reporter: The longer I’m around, the less I know.] Yeah, that’s right. The more look into it, the less I see.