Stoll: “You can’t rely on a switch to play hockey”

Jarret Stoll, on how the team breaks the current schedule into blocks:
You can’t look past anything, not this point in the season. Every game is a tough game. Every team is trying to get points, trying to move up in the standings or trying to get in that wildcard spot or move up in their division. You just have to worry about tonight. The Montreal Canadiens, we realize they’re a tough opponent. We’re going to have to play our best to beat them.

Stoll, on whether this time of year is suited for the team’s style of play:
Yeah, that’s the thing I’ll say right now. You can’t rely on a switch to play hockey and to play a season and rely on that to make the playoffs. We’ve got to play better, we know that. Even these last 20 games, we need to play better to make the playoffs. That’s plain and simple. We haven’t been consistent enough this season. We’ve heard it a lot lately about that switch, about this time of year and stuff like that. But for us, that’s outside of this room. We’ve got to play the right way to make the playoffs. It’s not going to be easy, especially in the Western Conference, especially in our division. We don’t look at it that way.

Dustin Brown, on whether he likes the Kings’ chances of making the playoffs:
Yeah, we’ve been in this situation in years past as a group. For whatever reason, our playoffs start with about 20 games left in the year. It started earlier this year.

Brown, on whether the team relies on experience to help make the playoffs:
The experience helps, but just the fact that this group has been together for years goes a long way. Combine that with the experience we’ve had and the players we have in here and we know how to win and what it takes to get to the playoffs.

Brown, on the trust in Jonathan Quick at this time of the season:
I think it’s just a belief in the group as a whole, really. Like I just said, we’ve been together and have been through a lot of these types of situations. So it’s leaning on each other and trusting each other. At the end of the day, we have guys that can break the game open for us. Quickie is one of them. It’s just playing our team game.

Brown, on whether he’s watching the standings:
Every day. [Reporter: 20 games out, is it almost like a ritual at that point? You’ve been here before, are you trying to make it a part of your annual routine?] I think we’d rather be in a better situation than we are now. But in saying that, I think this group is comfortable in hard situations because we’ve been in a lot of them. But I think if you ask any guy in here, we wish could’ve made it easier on ourselves the first 60 games but that’s in the past. We have to find a way to grind through the 20 games. Again, it comes back to we’ve been in this situation before and relying on each other to get the job done.