December 17 practice quotes: Darryl Sutter

On Brayden McNabb’s progress:
He can skate with the team. That’s why we flew him out, but he’s still a non-contact guy. He was six weeks Wednesday, I think, surgery, he was. He’s still a week-to-two weeks. Our goal always was Christmas. I talked about trying to circle a date to make him feel like he had a target, so that’s kind of the course he’s on. We thought it was important once he did his last X-ray to get him out here so he can skate with the team. Otherwise he’d lose a whole week here. So we thought we’d get him here and skate with the team every day, and then, what do we have at Christmas, three days? Because if we didn’t bring him here, he was going to lose those three days, plus this whole week. His conditioning, even when he got cleared, he wouldn’t have been ready. So that’s sort of what we’ll do. We just had these 10 days, we can take advantage of this time with him, and he was getting a little restless, too. Especially when we go on the road.

On Tom Gilbert:
He was better last night than the night before. [Reporter: He’s pretty poised, huh? That first pass?] Well, that was his game. Poise is not his problem. Pace is the problem. Quite honest, we put him back in – I had no problems with Greener or him. Greener gives you, it’s like I told him this morning. You can’t measure his heart. There are games where he’s really important, and Tommy’s experience helps, I think. We played Kevin, and Derek’s really grabbed a hold and done a good job. Kevin’s green and he’s a good player, but he’s still green, especially when you go on the road. I don’t like talking about it because you can’t get by with six. I would rather have eight. Eight and 13 is a good number for me, but it’s hard to do with our team just because of the way that works. We put Gibby back in because we wanted to get Marty and Muzz split up. They’ve had a hard time on the road. A lot of our games we’ve split ‘em up because they’re both good players, and sometimes they’re trying to do too much. We split ‘em up and just let ‘em focus on their own game, being good defenders and moving pucks – things like that.

On Alec Martinez’s growth and maturation:
He’s a really good guy. Marty’s a mature guy. When you talk to him, you don’t have to talk about hockey. He’s very insightful and knows what’s going on in the world. I’m lucky, that’s one guy that, quite honest, when I came here, I knew Marty when he was a boy. Marty and Brett played together in San Jose. They either won or played in a national championship when they were in pee wees or bantams. I’ve got a picture of Marty and Brett on New Year’s in I’m pretty sure it’s Las Vegas, and they were playing floor hockey in the hall of the hotel, and Wanda took a picture of the two of ‘em. They were just little buggers, right? Wanda had found it, it was when we moved, so I took it, and I put it on the bulletin board wherever we were playing. They were just little guys. They had the little pointed hats on. His family’s mostly lived outside of Dallas. They’d moved around quite a bit for his dad’s work. He’s originally from Michigan. They still have farm property outside of Saginaw. I think that’s where they first came to, was Michigan. I know they still have land there.