Doughty relishes underdog role

Every notable pundit around the NHL has picked the San Jose Sharks to beat the Kings in the first round, most in five or six games. Not the majority of pundits. Not most pundits. Literally, I have yet to see a single media personality predict that the Kings will win. Las Vegas odds, and the odds posted on the Bodog.com website, have the Kings as the biggest underdog in any of the eight first-round series. Now, there might be a reason for that, but on the other hand, it’s possible that the Kings might be able to draw motivation from that, if they’re even paying attention to it. Today, I asked Drew Doughty about the Kings’ underdog status, and if it was appealing to him in some way…

DOUGHTY: “I expected everyone to kind of choose San Jose before the series got going. That’s a good thing for us. They have the pressure on them, and they have for so many years in the playoffs. It seems like, when they’ve had that pressure, they really haven’t succeeded in the playoffs, so that’s obviously to our advantage. We knew we were going to be underdogs, and going into it, it’s always better to be the underdog. You have that pressure off of you. It’s not that you have nothing to lose, but you can kind of play with that underdog mentality. Starting off in San Jose, it’s going to be a loud building, but we just have to kind of look past that and use that in the other direction, use it to get us up for the game and get us excited.”

Terry Murray didn’t specifically address the Kings’ underdog status, but he did speak to the team’s mood heading into the series…

MURRAY: “I think there’s always a great sense of anticipation, whenever you get to this time. Excitement, adrenaline starts to get going on a day like today, because you know it starts tomorrow. There’s a great attitude. (With) the attention to the meetings that we had today, the questions that were asked, everybody is eager, everybody is excited. We know we’ve got a very hard opponent, one of the favorites coming into the playoffs, and it’s going to be a great challenge for us. We’re going into this thing not being afraid to win. We want to go out and play and compete and battle and do the right stuff every shift.”