May 17 practice quotes: Darryl Sutter

On whether he’s still using the same pair of glasses as yesterday:
“No, I found some old ones.”

On what the team can improve upon heading into Game 2:
“I think individual things….When you break games down, obviously you’re always trying to improve. I think that putting different guys in the lineup, guys have to adjust to that a little better. There’s always a familiarity with that position or sides you’re playing on defense. Obviously it goes game-by-game, faceoffs, situations, things like that. There’s a lot of individual situations that both teams will want to improve on.”

On whether there are any “issues of complacency” with the team leading two-nothing in the series:
“No.”

On facing a potentially desperate San Jose team:
“I think they played a desperate game last night. They played really well, and we were able to manage our way through it, I think. We knew they were going to try and come out and try and establish a forecheck. They did that in the first shift. They’re going to try and play a physical game that allowed them to draw a couple penalties in the first period. We were able to get through that, so I don’t think that either team is going to surprise each other in how they’re going to play.”

On whether Alec Martinez’s penalties in Game 2 were a cause for concern:
“What quantifies ‘several’? [Reporter: I think there three.] Two stick penalties. A holding and a hooking penalty.”

On whether there’s “any update on Sutter”:
“He’s fine. He’s doing an interview right now. [Will he play in Game 3?] No, I won’t be playing. I’m not available.”

On the players saying that last year’s experience aids them in games such as Game 2:
“We’ve had that experience this playoff already. We were down two-nothing in the last series. We were out of the series, and we were down two-nothing early in Game 3 or 4 and we were out of the game. That’s what playoffs are about. I said it last night. It’s sort of frustrating to answer those questions, quite honest, because our playoffs are four-out-of-seven series, which means generally, when you break it down, every series goes six games, which means somebody wins four, and if you do your math, then somebody loses two. You don’t win every period, you don’t win every shift, and you don’t win every game.”

On the Sharks scoring three goals on Jonathan Quick:
“Really, if you score three goals, you should win in the playoffs. That is fact. You can break that down, too. If you score three, you should win. But the inroads…of their success, clearly, is their power play. So last night their power play they scored…five seconds after the power play. So, really that counts as one. But the difference in the game was special teams, three-one. So inroads are irrelevant. Basically it’s how it breaks down your special teams and five on five and who gathers those minutes and how they play in those minutes.”

On the Sharks looking to “figure out” Quick:
“Well, last series everybody said they’d figured him out.”

On what he had known of Trevor Lewis before joining the Los Angeles organization:
You know, I didn’t know much live because I hadn’t seen him live. My best info on Lewie would’ve been scouting and pre-pro. Coming out of [Owen Sound] and being a kid that was a high pick and was probably a little bit miscast where everybody thought he was going to be a big scorer – which happens to a lot of those kids in the first round – and then it takes him some time to settle into that role, and most of them have to, quite honest, change organizations to do it. But I think Lewie…played really well in the American League and [has] a really good skill set and I think obviously when I came in I felt a little bit different about Trevor than probably other guys did, and I think it’s helped him.”

On how he felt “different” about Lewis:
“If everybody was a great goal scorer, then jeez, we’d have 12 of them. Right? But not everybody is a great goal scorer, so find his role and make them feel comfortable with it.”

On the Joe Thornton / Anze Kopitar match-ups:
“Hey, they’re two big guys, and ultimately they’re both teams’ top two centermen, at the end of the day, so I don’t have a problem playing against him. You know, that match-up in itself is a good match-up, right? But who’s playing with those two guys and how they play impacts that match-up more than anything else.”

On Thornton being “a handful”:
“Well, he’s a handful in our zone because he’s a big guy who hangs onto the puck and he’s going to compete to make plays, and that’s the strength of his game. Last night he was on and the big part of the possession part of his game last night was his faceoff. If you look at it, he was a dominant guy on the faceoff. When you win that many, you rarely see that. You might see a checking guy win 11 or something like that, but to see that high of a number – and primarily offensive zone faceoffs, too – is fairly significant.”

On whether he reinforces the up 2-0, down 2-0 aspects of a series due to the team’s experience:
“That’s something I don’t have to make a big stand about. We can say we have experience, [but] we’re still…playing guys that haven’t had much at all, quite honest. When you do the two teams, San Jose has quite honest 10 or 11 guys over 30 years old. They actually have a hell of a lot more experience at it than we do.”

On whether Game 2 got his heart rate going over the final two minutes:
“Quite honest, I wanted the right guys on the ice knowing that it was five-on-four then five-on-three then five-on-four.You’ve got to try and have the right guys, fresh guys out there, and that was more important.”

On whether he can speak on Tanner Pearson and Linden Vey skating with the team:
“No. Jarret Stoll and Kyle Clifford aren’t skating with either one of ‘em. Well, Cliffy is skating with the other guys now because he can’t have contact. I’d rather have close to a simulated team.”

On whether San Jose’s 36 shots through two games is a concern:
“Actually, the average in the playoffs is 32 against per team. Taking probably a few more power plays. Just do it last night – they had four on the first shift and 11 in the first period and eight of 11 were first shift and power plays. Then we had 18 in the third, and they had four. So, just do it. Do the power plays. Teams are a little more committed to pounding pucks on the power play in the playoffs than they are any other time. I know it’s a stat I couldn’t even care less about, quite honest.”

On the stats he pays attention to:
“I do a lot of head-to-head stuff, because that does impact – because top guys play a lot. That’s a fact, and how much they are producing against each other or what they’re trying to generate against each other or what lines are trying to do against each other. You look at last night, that’s an important stat…>San Jose had five-on-five and struggled to score, so…last night my feeling was that their defense was going to be a lot more involved in it, and they were. And their defense scored two goals, so you break that down into chances and things like that. They were more involved in it. Our defense can clearly do a better job at that, other than Doughty last night. I think he had…maybe nine total attempts, and he had five shots. After that, we were…not nearly as involved, or what we were getting from the outside from some guys that are looked on as goal scorers or shooters for their team, what they were doing in the series – things like that.

On whether he got any calls or texts after the game from his brothers:
“No, I didn’t, actually. They were all going to the Memorial Cup.”

On whether the team is a “quiet” team without vocal veterans in Matt Greene and Willie Mitchell, and whether it affects how he addresses the room:
“That’s up to the group to take that. I’m not going to be their cheerleader. [Reporter: Are you sensing some guys are sort of stepping up a little bit more without those two in there?] I don’t really pay attention to it. I don’t think that’s natural for somebody all of a sudden to…put their foot down and say ‘this is what we’re doing tonight.’ If that’s not natural for them, they’re not going to do it. So I don’t expect that.”