logo
Uncategorized

Kings turn to veterans late in games

48 Comments

This isn’t baseball, but in a way, the Kings try to utilize a set of closers. In most situations, defensemen Matt Greene and Willie Mitchell aren’t paired together, but at critical times, Darryl Sutter does put the two veteran, physical stay-at-home defensemen on the ice together. He does it, regularly, after the Kings score a goal — to help calm things down amid excitement, no doubt — and he regularly does it near the ends of games in which the Kings are holding narrow leads. In Game 3, with 1:19 remaining and with a faceoff in the Kings’ zone, Greene and Mitchell went out for approximately 40 seconds. Greene took a simple approach when asked about his late-game pairing…

GREENE: “You go wherever they tell you to go. That’s about it. If they call your name, you hop out there.’’

Question: But the two of you know why you’re out there…

GREENE: “It’s definitely not to score goals, if I’m out there. It’s hopefully just to shut (it) down and eat up some clock, and that’s about it.’’

Question: You do have a point in all three games in this series…

GREENE: “Yeah, that’s an accident.’’

Rules for Blog Commenting

  • No profanity, slurs or other offensive language. Replacing letters with symbols does not turn expletives into non-expletives.
  • Personal attacks against other blog commenters, and/or blatant attempts to antagonize other comments, are not tolerated. Respectful disagreement is encouraged. Posts that continually express the same singular opinion will be deleted.
  • Comments that incite political, religious or similar debates will be deleted.
  • Please do not discuss, or post links to websites that illegally stream NHL games.
  • Posting under multiple user names is not allowed. Do not type in all caps. All violations are subject to comment deletion and/or banning of commenters, per the discretion of the blog administrator.

Repeated violations of the blog rules will result in site bans, commensurate with the nature and number of offenses.

Please flag any comments that violate the site rules for moderation. For immediate problems regarding problematic posts, please email zdooley@lakings.com.