September 28 practice quotes: Darryl Sutter

On how he approaches the upcoming schedule after Tuesday’s game:
Well, we don’t have a lot of practice time until after the game. We’ll play one game in a week, or seven days after tomorrow. Obviously a lot of our guys played last night because it’s good for their conditioning, good to get into a regular season format-type situation. I think if you look at tomorrow and last night where you play on the road and then travel late and then come back home and play, we do it a lot. Actually we do it a lot after back-to-back road games – fly home and then play that next day. That’s part of your preparation for the regular season, is making sure that you get into that situation in the preseason. So a lot of guys will play again. That’s the only way I look at it.

On what stood out in Sunday’s preseason win:
I liked our game. I thought system-wise we were getting some good structure in our game, and I think work-wise we were fine. I liked the play of our – I don’t know if I’d call them – our “third and fourth lines,” I thought they had really good games for us. I think that after Greener and Muzz went down with the four defensemen, sometimes that’s the best way to have it, right? They just play their game, and they know they’re going to have to recover in a hurry, and they know they’re going back out there, so maybe we’ll just dress four defensemen tomorrow. It’ll be good for those guys.

On Christian Ehrhoff’s acclimation:
He has lots to learn. It’s still a big adjustment for him, but I think he’s a really good student and he’s a really good player. [Reporter: He was with you in San Jose, right?] No. He might’ve been there one camp. But I don’t know. There are so many new guys when I first went there that we were looking probably more at the veterans. I’ve said it lots – in my mind, I see him in a Canuck jersey. That’s how I see him, because he was on a really good team. Hey, he went to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final. That’s how I see it. I see him on the power play with the Sedins and Edler. It’s almost like last night for me.

On the “options” he has at center beyond Anze Kopitar and Jeff Carter:
Well, we need good options, and we need to match up in this division, if you look at it. I don’t want to get into names or specifics, but for sure there is a challenge. If Anaheim is the best division, then for sure there is a matchup there that goes a little deeper than Kesler and Getzlaf. [Reporter: Hoping to find somebody who can thrive with Dustin and probably Dwight there, also?] I’ve said it before, and you have Trevor that you can put in lots of different spots, but you need at least three other guys to say, based on their performance, ‘I can handle playing against this guy, I can handle playing against that guy, I can take faceoffs on the road when the other team gets the last change, I can be responsible in my own end, I can handle the big, physical part of the game that teams are playing, I can handle the speed of that team.’ We have young guys that want that opportunity. They have to do it in preseason.

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