On Drew Doughty’s absence from practice:
He was out early. Just precaution – three or four guys are banged up. Want to make sure they’re ready for Buffalo. [Reporter: And he’s ready?] He’ll be fine.
On concussion protocol working the way it was designed to yesterday:
We were shown a video in training camp – coaches, players, trainers – regarding what was a sign, the difference between signs and symptoms. It’s pretty standard. Now we’re seeing it quite often. We’ve seen ones that are fairly controversial, whether they should be or not, and ones that are pretty obvious. The needle is way on the side of precaution more than anything else. There’s not much we say or do about it. I mean, the league has made a real clear definition, statement, message, whatever you want to call it on it, and I don’t think that would change.
On Jonathan Quick, and whether there has been a change in his progress:
No, other than he must be a Giants fan. [Reporter: He said Lawrence Taylor’s the best defensive player ever.] He’s probably right. I’d tend to agree with him. But in terms of [his progress], he’s just starting moving to the end of training from therapy. He’s still very much in the rehab mode. They’re still talking about a month before he could even begin to say what that next step was. It’s not in this [calendar] year before there’s any sort of update.
On how he breaks up the upcoming road trip:
I just think the trip is such that you have two back-to-backs. There’s a back-to-back in the first part of it, and there’s a back-to-back in the second part of it, so I think that’s probably how you break it down because you’ve got guys that are going to play a lot three-in-four, things like that. Once we get to the east, we stay in that Eastern Time Zone, it gets long, but we’ve also been home for [a long time]. It’ll be 27 days at home other than a sleep-over in Phoenix, when you look at it. That’s long, too. I mean, really, when you look at it, we’ve played 10 games, counting tomorrow, in 27 days. Maybe this was tougher than what we’re going to do.
On whether there’s anything his staff emphasizes before leaving on a long trip:
No. We played two road games in this stand here and we won ‘em both, so you take that as you go into two tough buildings. We’re not going to practice anything different or play anything different.
On Mark Borowiecki receiving a two-game suspension:
I was a little surprised. I just saw it now. I’m still not sure of all these calls. When you look at the impact they have on games, you look at the Kyle Clifford five-minute penalty in Winnipeg, it’s early in the game, and the team that scores wins on it. That’s what happened in that, and we thought that was the wrong call, and it was the wrong call. It was a two-minute penalty. One or two. And last night, literally, it’s two minutes, if he drew blood [four minutes], is the guy out of the game, is it five minutes, is it five and 10? It’s a real vague rule. So Tyler gets up because he’s a tough guy. He gets up and goes off the ice, and then there’s the concussion protocol after, so if he lays on the ice, is the guy kicked out of the game? There are so many different ways of looking at it, but I have a firm view in my mind how all this should be handled, and whether that opinion matters or not, I think that the players should be more actively involved when they’re the ones who are basically what they’re doing is being suspended, which means that they’re getting money taken away from ‘em. I think if I was a player, the players should be more actively involved in these rulings. I think there should be not-currently-working general managers in it, and there should be not-currently-working head coaches with experience involved in these decisions. I think it would be a little bit clearer on it. That’s my opinion.
On being the active head coach with the most goals scored as an NHL player:
I got a couple more this morning. They weren’t pretty. You won’t see ‘em on the highlights tonight, but actually I outscored some guys this morning. [Reporter: Is that good or bad? I don’t know.] It’s a challenge. [Reporter: But you didn’t outscore Trevor Lewis.] Actually, Lewie was hot in practice this morning, too.
On Trevor Lewis’ recognition:
Yeah, I think there’s a little bit of that – what do you call it – ‘echo stuff’ thrown. He doesn’t get enough credit. When somebody doesn’t score for 10 games or whatever, and then everybody talks about it.
Rules for Blog Commenting
Repeated violations of the blog rules will result in site bans, commensurate with the nature and number of offenses.
Please flag any comments that violate the site rules for moderation. For immediate problems regarding problematic posts, please email zdooley@lakings.com.