April 7 media availability: Darryl Sutter

On whether tonight’s game will be tougher than last week’s game against Edmonton:
They’ll be ready. That’s not an issue. It doesn’t matter if the score was 2-1 or 10-2. It doesn’t matter. It’s still about the game.

On whether heavy minutes by several players last night places an emphasis on rolling four lines tonight:
No, we’re looking to win, not playing favorites, I’m not looking at last night. Other than Kopi, who did? Nobody. Other than Kopi, nobody played over their [minutes], and he had to because he was a lefthander who could win every faceoff, and he was dominant, so he went off for every backhand faceoff in his zone. And, obviously with overtime, if you figure that in, that’s 65, so there’s guys who get a couple more minutes. There was nobody that was over there. In fact, some guys were under it. Some guys were half speed and couldn’t play last night. They were just along for the ride.

On the challenges in holding third period leads since the end of last season:
It’s probably all one-goal games, I would bet. So if you’re refreshing your memory by basing it on last night, the score was one-nothing a minute and 30 seconds in. I think you spend 58 minutes trying to protect the lead, I mean, you’re a big boy, you see what’s going on in the league now. It happens a lot now, and one goal is not enough to win.

On the challenges last night in building on the one-goal lead:
The biggest issue that we’ve had in any of those games is great, great opportunities that you should get a two-goal lead. Once in a while you’re going to give up a two-goal lead or a three-goal lead. We’ve done that. We’ve come back from that. It’s not that big a deal. But being able to finish their opportunities – I don’t know why you always want to go back to last year or whatever it is, but we’ve scored more goals than we did last year, and our goaltending’s been just as good, so it’s got to do with personnel. Hey, the team that won the Stanley Cup – you always want to keep going to those teams – the team that won the Stanley Cup had 94 points. The team that made the playoffs last year, the eighth hole was 91, so the league’s a little tougher. Our goal was to get 100 points this year. We can still get 99. We’re still having a hell of a year.

On any concern of going back to Jonathan Quick:
No. Workload was heavy, yes, but I trust ‘em both. Jones came in in Minnesota, gave us a chance. Didn’t score enough goals for him.

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