October 15 practice quotes: Darryl Sutter

On using no-trade clauses when he was Calgary’s general manager:
Well, in that market, you had to have a lot of those because you couldn’t overpay to keep a player. We were very much a budget team, so the off-set of that were those types of clauses. They were restricted movement clauses. They weren’t ‘no trade;’ they were basically a list of teams. [Reporter: Did you grit your teeth when you had to give one of those?] Yeah, all the time. But at the end of the day, that would be ownership’s decision, and that’s how you could retain top players.

On whether he said anything to Andy Andreoff prior to his first game:
He knew he was playing if Gabby couldn’t go. [Reporter: When you’re in, you’re in.] Go play the game. It’s not too complicated. Everybody does it at some point. [Reporter: With his specific game, is there anything that you continually try to emphasize with him?] Sure. There’s lots of things. Again, he’s played one game. He’ll fight like hell to stay in the lineup. Right now with injuries, obviously it’s a great opportunity for some guys to play some more minutes, not just Andy.

On whether he was pleased with Mike Richards and Anze Kopitar playing together:
Yeah, we need them to play well together. When you have guys banged up, you’ve got to move guys around. That’s why Andreoff got in the lineup, that’s how Jordan got in the lineup, that’s how Mike got moved to left wing. We didn’t feel that we wanted to split Carter’s line up or Jarret’s line. We wanted to use them as a checking line if we can, so that meant that the Kopitar line had to have a change in it, and that Cliffy’s line had to have a change in it. There are still lots of different ways in doing it. We’ve used Dwight King at center a little bit the last couple games. Mike went over last night. We can move Jeff around. So if you’re five-on-five you’re trying to even get more balance in our minutes through our lineup. I mean, two games ago, I think Mike and Brownie were our highest minutes guys, if you look at it, for forwards. So we’re trying to get some more balance in. If you can find ways to win while you’re doing that, then it should help us in the long run.