April 2 morning skate quotes: Darryl Sutter

On what Nic Dowd could do to remain a player consistently chosen as one among 18 skaters:
One of 23. He’s been given that this year, and he earned it, so hopefully he’ll continue to take the next steps over the next few months to move up one somewhere. [Reporter: What steps would you like to see him take?] Offense, defense, training, preparation, match-ups, road play, back-to-back situations, go on and on. [Reporter: Is that unique to him, or any young player?] I would say it’s unique.

On whether the Kings deserve better than to be where they’re at:
I think you’re going to look at it at the end of the season more. It’s not really ‘right now.’ That’s easy to say. That’s like asking about a player going forward or a season going backwards. In terms of the back part of it, the data part of it, the stat part of it, if you’d look at where we are in most areas that are most important, we should be higher. But there’s one area that we’re not, and it’s hurt us. [inaudible] and goals. Goals for. [Reporter: Do they for the most part compete and do what you ask?] Absolutely. That’s never a question. I know it because you haven’t seen us as much as other guys. But that’s not even a question with the group in terms of that. If you want to take it at the end, our division record will tell us, and there has to be more emphasis put on your division. I said it last time. These guys know. Edmonton, Calgary and San Jose all took a major step in terms of what their teams were. Keep up. You’ve got to keep up. There’s no question about it. [Reporter: The division has gotten a lot harder these past few years, you think?] No, this last summer it did. That’s what I said. Edmonton, Calgary and San Jose, for sure. [Reporter: But most nights they’ve given you what you wanted?] Our players? [Reporter: Yeah.] We haven’t had our personnel – quite honest, we lost Jonathan Quick. Winning in this league, I mean, we’ve done remarkably well to say we’re still second or third in goals-against, when you look at it. You need one goalie to be over .600, and you need one goalie to be over .500. At the end of the day, if you don’t have that, if you don’t have the goal scoring and all that, that’s the window. If you look at Jonathan since he’s come back, he’s a .600 goalie, right? You look at Bishop since he’s been here, he’s been a .500 goalie. If you do that over the course of the season, you make the playoffs. When Peter was here, he was over .600. Whoever was behind him was not. You can’t. You can’t. It’s like if you’re covering a different sport, that’s a situation that says you can have a good number one guy, but behind him you don’t have it. It’s an issue. We buried Peter in January and February. Didn’t have nobody behind him. Couldn’t get wins. He gave us all he could, but he should’ve been in a different role. [Reporter: And you had him in a different role.] Well, no, we didn’t. We had another guy in a different role. Peter had to come back up. I’m not going there with any of that stuff.