March 31 postgame quotes: Doughty, Martinez

Drew Doughty, on allowing Minnesota to come back:
It’s not usually our team’s forte. We didn’t play very well in the second, but we had a little collapse in the third period where they got two really quick and couldn’t get it back. They’re a good defensive hockey team. We knew that if we let ‘em back in the game it would be tough to win it. We just didn’t do a good enough job.

Doughty, on Los Angeles having shots limited:
They’re just a good defensive hockey club. We had troubles getting through the neutral zone, I think, and getting speed on our forecheck. They’re good at that. If we ever play ‘em down the road, we really have to pay attention on how to get through that neutral zone with speed, how to get possession, and if we don’t have possession, make the smart dumps where we can create turnovers and get the cycle going. That’s where we struggled, was the neutral zone.

Doughty, on whether Minnesota was a desperate team:
Yeah, they were desperate in a way, but we can’t be thinking about that. We have to make sure that we are still battling for a spot. The main thing is we want to be playing really good hockey going into the playoffs. If we ever slack at any point, even though we know we’ll be right in that third spot, it’s going to make our game go downhill, and that’s kind of, I think, a little bit what happened tonight. That second period, they played very, very desperate, and we didn’t, and it kind of brought the momentum on their side and they kind of took it to us. So we have to make sure that we’re just thinking we’ve got to be winning games going into playoffs if we want to win first round, second round, or however far we can go.

Alec Martinez, on any concern over losing a third period lead in a loss:
Obviously it’s not what we want. I think that we let our game slip a little bit there, obviously there in the third. We’ve got to be a stronger hockey club, make better plays towards the end of games. Good teams close out other teams, and we didn’t do that tonight.

Martinez, on what happened after the team got off to a “good start”:
We got off to a good start, but in this league, especially in the west and this time of the year, you’ve got to play a full 6-0 minutes or it’s going to come back and bite you. We didn’t do that.