Budaj on overtime trend, pace of practice

It means nothing for tomorrow’s game against Nashville, but Peter Budaj has now started four games in his Los Angeles Kings career – at New York last year, and at Dallas, and versus Vancouver and Columbus this year – and has won all four games. Interestingly, none of the games have been decided in regulation, thanks to two overtime daggers from Alec Martinez, one from Tanner Pearson, and a shootout Pearson game-winner. In all, Budaj is 4-0-0 with a 2.65 goals-against average and .893 save percentage in five total appearances with the club.

Peter Budaj, on winning four games with Los Angeles in overtime, and what it means:
Winning is fun. It’s an old saying, and it is true. When you win the games, you’re very excited, very happy. Everything comes easier. You work hard easier, because your mind is a little looser because you’re winning, but you can not focus on what happened yesterday. We play every other day. Yesterday was yesterday, it was a great win for us. We came back, we showed a lot of character and we worked hard and got the overtime goal, but you don’t look at it like ‘overtime wins.’ You look at it like ‘wins.’ Then you come back today and we look at the video, see what we can do better, see what we’re doing well already and we can continue doing well, because there’s a lot of games, there’s not much time in between, so you’ve just got to be ready and you’ve got to quickly forget about winning or losing. You win, it’s great, you turn the page, you keep going and you just keep trying to build on the good atmosphere you have right now when you win, so we’ve just got to keep going like that.

Budaj, on any difference between practices run by Darryl Sutter and Mike Stothers:
They’re similar. Obviously Stuttsy’s working with a lot of younger guys that are up-and-coming guys from juniors. The maturity level has to be taught a little bit more, and I think Stuttsy’s doing a great job at that. … He’s really teaching the kids and preparing them really well for the next step. You can look at Dowder, you can look at Forbs, guys from last year that were down. They’re ready here. They’re doing the right stuff, they’re doing what the coaching staff here asks of them because they’re prepared. I think Mike prepares them really well so they can get the job done up here, so it’s a really good combination.

Budaj, on how the practice pace between Los Angeles, Montreal & Colorado compares:
Every team is different, but the pace is the same. Everybody works hard. It’s the National Hockey League. You can’t say that one team works harder than the other – that’s not true. We do it because it’s our job. We get paid for that, and just like you come to work, we come to work. When you walk into the dressing room, we put the pads on and we go to work. We work as hard as we can every single day. You don’t take anything for granted. Just try to get better every day, because it’s a long season. Anything can happen, you’ve just got to be ready because it’s a tough world, it’s a result world. It’s a world ‘what have you done for me lately?” That’s how it works, unfortunately, in this world, but that’s how it is. We’ve got to be ready and we’ve got to prove to them every day that we’re working as hard as we can so we can be ready for the next game.