March 6 media availability: Darryl Sutter

Several quick notes before Darryl’s quotes:

-The team did not practice on Friday. Instead, the group gathered on the ice for the annual team photo.

-Alec Martinez (concussion-like symptoms) and Tanner Pearson (fractured fibula) took the ice after the team picture for a light skate. They’re not at the point where they’re going to be available to chat with the media, but I’ll have a story up on their brief on-ice session later today.

-11-year-old Joshua Breeze also took the ice. A Calgary native who suffers from Cystic Fybrosis, Josh – who has an awfully good wristshot – took the ice with Dustin Brown and Jonathan Quick as Martinez and Pearson occupied the other half of the rink. He’s a huge Kings fan and will be embedded with the team through tomorrow’s game against Pittsburgh in addition to visiting sights and amusement parks around the L.A. area. Photos and a story will follow this afternoon.

Darryl Sutter quotes:

On the team’s success in transition and getting pucks quickly to the forwards:
We have to do it. Hey…we win a few in a row and it’s glorious, and we lose two or three in a row and everybody says you’re not glorious. We have little goals that we’re trying to reach, and if we reach them, then we’ll be a playoff team. So it’s all part and parcel. There’s a lot more to it than just passing the puck quickly.

On the penalty kill’s success:
I think we have to get better. I think there’s been some drop in it, and I think we were a little better again last night than we were in the Edmonton game. Most of it is just the attention to detail. We were using some different forwards and not using guys quite as much. If you look at it, it’s a little bit different. You know what? As much as penalty killing is its own game – just like a power play is its own game during the game – there has to be some reason for you to be on it, too. And the reason to be on it is not to be on the ice when a goal is scored against you. Obviously it’s easy data to back it up. We looked at that, the biggest thing that we talked about during the All-Star Break was how we were going to get our penalty straightened out because penalty killing wins you more games than power play does.

On not being in as many shorthanded situations as the beginning of the season:
It’s not been a beginning-of-the-year thing. The Kings have been historically a high-penalized team, and now we’re in terms of penalties, I’m not sure what we’d be today, but your actual minor penalties, and if you’d break it down farther into actual time – which is more important; it’s not the ‘penalties’ – we’d be like 10-through-14 is where we’ve been. So that’s a significant improvement from past years, for sure. So from going from 25-to-30 to into that is significant.

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