December 7 practice quotes: Darryl Sutter

On Kyle Clifford:
Cliffy’s sick so he didn’t practice today. I talked to those guys in Manch to see to see how Andy [Andreoff was doing.] He played last night and tonight, and if Gaborik isn’t ready then we’d bring Andy back. [Reporter: Cliffy just seemed a little-] He was sick overnight, so we just told him it’s better off to shut ‘er down.

On whether Matt Greene would make a good assistant coach:
You know, when you talk to players about that stuff, that’s a long ways away. That’s like asking me when I was 28 or 29 if I wanted to coach. No I didn’t. I wanted to stay in the game. There are coaches in our game, career coaches that come that way, and obviously they weren’t able to play the game or whatever went through there, so that was the step they took. But most of them had done it their whole careers. It’s different in our fraternity because being an ex-player and then coaching for a long time, you know the guys who are cut out to be coaches, but you have to also remember in today’s game, these guys make a lot of money, and coaching takes a lot of out of you now. It takes a lot away from everything if you’re going to be a good coach, so you’d have to really, really, really aspire to want to be that. It’s a big change of lifestyle going from a player to a coach. The best job in this business is the playing part of it, for sure. So [if] ‘this guy’s cut out,’ or ‘this guy’s cut out [for coaching],’ there’s no way of telling. They’d have to really aspire to do that.

On how to build consistency with this team:
I think every team wants [that]. That’s getting better. From a coaching standpoint, we’ve got points in, what, 19 out of 20-something games? I mean, if I would have said that at the start of the year, I’d take it. Away we go. I don’t think as a team we’re looking at consistency. We’re looking at the top end of our lineup being more consistent. You can go this however you want, but when you have a lot of young guys who are playing serious minutes – as some of the kids up front are – then the top end of your lineup, you’re looking for the consistency in that, and the top end are the players who get all the credit when you win, and they have to absorb a lot more.

On improved offensive numbers despite consistent production from top players:
We were a high scoring team in the playoffs…So it’s not an issue with our team, and it just goes right back to the balance of the group that doesn’t get the credit. It’s the guys who are looked on as offensive-number guys who haven’t contributed as much this year. Hopefully they do. I’m not going to bang my head against the wall trying to get superstars to contribute more. I mean, they’ve got to figure that out.