Bartosak on pushing for starts; Brodzinski on first game

Patrik Bartosak, on whether the Kings improved as the game progressed:
I think so, yeah. We started pretty good as well, but I think, like you said, as the game went on we played better and better. Unfortunately they got a couple lucky bounces, and everytime we made a mistake it feels like it ended up in the back of our net. But like I said, I feel as the game went on we played better and better hockey.

Bartosak, on his own performance:
Pretty good. It was the first exhibition game, so there were a couple things I would like to clean up. But I felt fine. [Reporter: It didn’t seem like you had much chance on the first one for sure. What happened on the second one? Was that the deflected point shot?] Yeah, the guy shot it and it went in the low blocker side. I tried to lean on it, but it got deflected off our guy’s stick. Like I said, an unfortunate bounce, and it ended up in the back of our net.

Bartosak, on Ryan Horvat serving as captain:
He’s a great leader. He led the way throughout the whole camp, and I think he deserved to get the C for tonight. I think he did a great job leading the guys and being a great leader.

Bartosak, on whether he’s more comfortable and confident in his career:
Yeah, definitely, I feel more comfortable and more confident by myself now. I’m more experienced than I was two or three years ago, of course, but at the end of the day, you just play to win every day. It doesn’t matter if you’re 18, 20 or 22. You just try to win games, and it doesn’t matter who you play against, if it’s in junior, AHL or up here in L.A>. So yeah, I feel definitely more confident than I did a couple years ago.

Bartosak, on his beard:
Yeah, I’ve tried to get that going for a couple weeks now. [Reporter: Is it staying?] Yeah, it’s going to stay for a while now. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it after that, but I think it’s going to stay for a while now.

Bartosak, on playing for an organization where Jonathan Quick is entrenched in net:
My job is to push him, one day try to take his spot. He’s definitely a good mentor for us. We all look up to him, obviously. IT’s a great challenge for us having a goalie like that in the organization. It’s a great challenge for us, and we’re definitely up to it.

Bartosak, on whether he wants to replicate last year’s balance, or whether he’s looking to push J-F Berube for more AHL starts:
I mean, obviously I’m looking to get more starts. My job is to push J-F as well. Like I said, my job is to take the number one spot in Manch and push J-F for that, but it’s definitely going to be that healthy competition there because I know that both of us are capable of playing at the AHL level, and now it’s just up to us who’s going to be the better goalie and who’s going to deserve the starts there. [Reporter: Do you have to be patient, or impatient, to make this job difficult for the staff to decide who’s going to play?] I guess you have to be both. You have to be patient if you don’t get to play – you have to be patient, work hard. But at the same time, you have to be impatient and have to work harder and harder every day to get the start and get the ice time.

Jonny Brodzinski, on his late third period goal:
Just a good forecheck by Kempe and Zykov, and it kind of kicked behind the net and the goalie was cheating off the post, and I was able to bank it off his shoulder and up in the upper left hand corner.

Brodzinski, on wearing a Kings jersey in a game for the first time:
It was definitely exciting, and it’s something I dreamed of as a kid. But now we’ve just got to work towards just becoming a team overall, and we’re not expecting a loss tomorrow, so we’re just going to take this one to the bank and just improve.

Brodzinski, on whether there were “butterflies” early despite his experience:
We prepared extremely well these last couple of days here. Not so much ‘nervousness’ as it is ‘exciting.’ But this is a totally different game and a totally different speed. Pass it around the tape, there’s no bobbled pucks, so it’s a fun game to play, for sure.

Brodzinski, on the ebb and flow of the 60 minutes of hockey:
I feel like we had our chances definitely in the first period. We had two wide open right down the slot that we didn’t bury, and I think that’s what kind of put us underneath the gas pedal there. But we definitely had our licks, for sure.