Doughty on Sharks: “They were worried about us coming back”

With the Kings a win away from capturing a Stanley Cup, the team has been asked to reflect on the three-nothing comeback against the San Jose Sharks in the first round.

When comparing the historic comeback to the team’s current three-nothing series lead, Drew Doughty shared something that probably won’t sit very well with a team that has undergone some self-reflection and potentially core player movement since being reverse-swept out of the playoffs.

“Once we won that first game in the San Jose series, we kind of had a feeling we were going to come back and win that series, and you could see it in their eyes and their team and their captains and leaders that they were worried about us coming back, so we don’t want to give these guys any life,” he said.

Yeah, there should be plenty of emotion heading into the first Los Angeles-San Jose meeting of the 2014-15 season.

Back at the game on hand, Doughty expects a strong push back from New York.

“They’re a good hockey team. They’re here in the Stanley Cup Final for a reason, and we can’t let ‘em back in this series,” he said. “We need to win tonight. This game’s the most important game of our lives, of this season especially. It’s a must-win.”

Drew Doughty, on the feelings heading into Game 4 in 2012 and 2014:
I think we know how hard it is to close out a series, and we know that we can’t take any games off, any shifts off. We’re just going to use that experience of trying to close it out. We need to have our best effort tonight. We expect their best efforts, so it’s going to be a good hockey game and it’s a game we need to win.

Doughty, on the team’s conscious efforts to rid themselves of distractions:
I guess, basically the distractions last time were trying to get tickets for certain people. There weren’t enough tickets, and just stuff like that going on. Basically, we just talked about it as a group, and we just said let the families deal with it, get your mom in charge, get your wife in charge, whatever it needs to be, and just completely forget about that. Rather than having to go for breakfast with them or something like that, just focus on the team. You know you have a lot of time to see your family and friends after we hopefully win, and right now it’s just focusing on this game.

Doughty, on whether he thought it’d be possible to win a Stanley Cup and gold medal in the same year:
You always, I guess, think that it’s possible, but you don’t think it’s going to happen. It’s so hard to win both trophies. I still haven’t won the second one yet, even though I’m hoping that we do do that. It would be great to have both of those, but right now I’m just thinking of it one period at a time and waiting for that puck drop.

Doughty, on whether a larger picture was considered during the team’s January slump:
We always knew that eventually the scoring would come. We have a lot of talent up front, and we have a lot of guys who can score goals. We have just overall a good team, and we knew that we didn’t have to think too much and change anything. We knew that when playoffs came around, we would step up.

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