Brown, on the playoffs

Here’s what Kings captain Dustin Brown said about being in the playoffs for the first time in his career, after 431 regular-season games…

Question: How did it feel to score that goal to give the team the regular-season ending win?

BROWN: “It was an exciting moment for myself and for everyone on the team. At that point, we didn’t know if we were going to finish fifth or sixth, so it was a good way to end the season, for sure.”

Question: How do you view the way the team ended the season? A little up and down?

BROWN: “Yeah. We haven’t maybe had the consistency in our game that we had earlier, but you look at our record and there’s a lot of shootout losses. When you get to the playoffs, there are no shootouts. You just play until there’s a winner. The way we play the game, I think that’s beneficial, that we can grind teams down and make it a close game, and you never know what can happen.”

Question: What are your thoughts about the matchup with Vancouver?

BROWN: “They’re a good team. I think they’ve been one of the most consistent teams all year. We haven’t really sat down and broken them down yet. We know them pretty well just from playing them, but over the next couple days we’ll probably break them down more and really figure out our plan, our game plan, and go from there.”

Question: Expecting a little better from Luongo this time?

BROWN: “I’m assuming. He’s one of the elite goalies in the league. We got the best of him last game, but I don’t expect it to be like that on a game-to-game basis.”

Question: You have four guys who were in that building for the gold-medal game and experienced it. What can you take from that, on an individual level?

BROWN: “It’s Canada, so it’s one of the hockey hotbeds. Vancouver, a regular-season game is pretty loud there, so from a player’s standpoint it’s pretty exciting going in there. The fans, and just the whole atmosphere will be fun to play in. So I think at first you’ll maybe be a little overwhelmed. Just in warmups, you can feel the energy in the building, and it was the same for the Olympic game. Canada and the Olympics is probably the biggest, from the fans’ aspect, but people have their teams and Vancouver is a pretty proud city, of their Canucks, so it could be even louder than the Olympics.”

Question: What does it mean to you, personally, to be in the playoffs?

BROWN: “We haven’t been in the playoffs since I’ve been here, so personally I’ve been waiting for this for a long time. I think, from the standpoint of the organization, everybody is just excited to be back playing hockey at this time of the year.”