September 30 practice quotes: Darryl Sutter

On Dustin Brown seeing a nutritionist during the off-season:
The bottom line is they haven’t been able to train for almost five years. If you look at it, the year before they won the Cup, the team was all over the map if you look at the start of that season, they started that season in Europe, they finished the preseason on the road before they went to Europe, I believe they were in Portland, Oregon, Vegas, Europe, then mid-East Coast and then home, it was a tough year. And then we ended up winning the Cup that year, but the training part that part of the summer wasn’t really good, and then we played in June three years in a row. So, we haven’t really been able to train. I know there’s been a lot made about this guy what he’s done, or this guy what he’s done; most guys want to handle their diet or what they take in properly, especially some of these guys with young families, it’s hard to get it nailed down. Most of the guys now eat exactly what they’re supposed to, it’s not just the nutrition part, it’s the whole balance of what you take in, what you do in here on game days, what you’re doing before practice and after practice. Have I noticed it with Brownie? Sure, Brownie feels good about himself; he’s coming off of a tough year – bottom line. It was a tough year for him last year if you look at it. He’s a proud guy, and he wanted to do the necessary things, we asked him to be around the ice more during the summer as part of his training and he did that, and he took it upon himself to get a nutritionist, and that just tells you that he’s trying to get better as a player and be a good role model for some of the other guys.

On playing one game in eight days prior to the season:
Everybody plays six to seven games; everybody gets a break in there somewhere. If we look at our schedule, it’s not one game in eight days, we play again in three days, then we have a Sunday off where our players rest, and then we have two days back, so we need to get the game in that we need for the guys that need the game, everybody will have played their three to five games, and we should be ready.