Quick’s approach lauded by Sutter

Darryl Sutter shared a word on Tuesday for those who wouldn’t consider Jonathan Quick to be among the league’s “elite” goaltenders.

“Well, that’s too bad. Basically, those are the people who don’t want somebody to do well,” he said.

There’s no point in resuscitating the discussion over whether Quick falls in a group whose tenets and cutoff are unquantifiable. Who is “elite?” Is the third-best goalie “elite,” but the fourth-best goalie “not elite?” The Kings have thrived under an organizational philosophy that combines both hard, quantifiable data with emotion, character and intangible. Until neutrinos can be counted and analyzed, how is it possible to measure the latter?

It is those unmeasurable traits that Quick – like many goalies who have won at the highest level – exudes in both his approach and game action. And while speaking with the media yesterday, Sutter characterized several of the aspects that have allowed him to excel during the dog days of the 2014-15 season. Dating back to February 7th, Quick has posted a 13-3-1 record with a .933 save percentage, 1.67 goals-against average and three shutouts.

Helene Elliott wrote about Quick in her LA Times column from today’s paper, and you should give it a read. Below are several additional thoughts that Darryl Sutter shared on the two-time Cup winner.

Darryl Sutter, on Jonathan Quick’s rhythm:
Well, we need him to. A couple keys for us about…three months ago were that we were going to have to adjust and adapt, and one of those adjustments and one of those adapatations were that we were going to have to play Jonathan more, and that’s kind of what we did. You know what? The way that the schedule’s been broken out, though, unless you look at it, you don’t think he’s played that much because there’s been times where we’ve given him back-to-backs and there’s times where he’s had a few days and there’s times where the All-Star break and things like that where he’s had his time. I guess in the big picture I’d prefer him to be more in the 50’s somewhere, but we’ll discuss that in a month.

Sutter, on Quick’s balance between work and rest:
We have three two-days left, and we have a good enough relationship where I asked him – even this morning – if he wants to go, or tell him what we’re doing in practice to see what he wants. [Reporter: Does he ever surprise you? I mean, he’s usually almost always out there.] No, I think I have a pretty good handle on when he’s going to [skate] and when he’s not. He likes the day after to look at his games, and a lot of times that’s enough. He’s sort of your consummate team guy because I’ll say, ‘do you want to go?’ and he’ll go, ‘is everybody going?’ Which means, ‘if they are, I am.’

Sutter, on whether Quick has Miikka Kiprusoff’s tendencies:
All the best guys handle big loads. It’s what they do. And the amount of work during a game doesn’t really affect them because of the way they prepare. Some of them are actually better with more work. We’re back to giving up the fewest shots in the league, so we sort of take that into consideration always, too. I don’t know. He’s just a great competitor, and when he says, ‘it’s just about the wins,’ he means that. And you wish everybody had that attitude.