More on Doughty

A lot has been made over the past couple days about Drew Doughty’s season-opening performance. The attention, of course, comes from the contrast from last season, when Doughty so rarely looked like a teenage rookie. Yesterday, Terry Murray expressed confidence in Doughty’s ability to bounce back, and today he discussed a bit of his conversation with Doughty.

MURRAY: I met with him yesterday after practice. I don’t want to get into all the specifics of what was going on there, but it was just reinforcing his game from last year and how good of a player he is and how he needs to continually approach with that mindset. As with all of our play outside the dots, that is just about, `OK, the season has begun so the attitude has to be this.’

“It’s hard, it’s heavy, it’s strong, it’s two hands on the stick, it’s ready to compete. You can get through a training camp and sort of let yourself off in those areas and still have some success, because you’re playing against juniors and minor-league players who you’re going to dominate just because you’re better than them. Now it’s the real thing, and it’s just trying to get that focus back, from all of the players.”

It will be interesting to see who Doughty’s partner is tomorrow. Asked about his ideal defensive matchup with San Jose, Murray cited Doughty and Sean O’Donnell, but O’Donnell will be suspended for tomorrow’s game. Will Murray move Davis Drewiske and give Doughty a different look?