October 10 practice quotes: Darryl Sutter

On the focus of Saturday’s practice:
We talked before – we wanted to make sure we got a good aerobic day in, just with the way the schedule is, and get back to a good practice Monday. [Reporter: Is that a general thing that happens a day before a day off, when you have a luxury of a practice the day before?] Yeah. The way this month’s schedule is, it’s broken up with the two days, the three days. It’s not a normal schedule right now, so we’ve got to keep our fitness up and keep guys sharp that are sharp, and then some guys that haven’t been as sharp in the fundamental part of it, get ‘em to where they’ve got to be, and they’ve got to do it through practice because you don’t want ‘em to be doing it as the game goes along. You want ‘em to be sharp early.

On the adjustment in the forward groupings on Saturday:
We generated a lot last night, and a lot of it was from our back end. Our back end was more mobile, our back end was moving pucks better, and that’s basically where you create a lot of your team speed from, so we were a lot better at that. If you’d just look at it, we had 70-something attempts last night, and in comparison to the first game, it’s almost a 50% increase, so the next part of that is the finish part of it, and as well as our defense moved the puck last night, also, a lot of our generation towards their net was from our defense. We need some more from the forwards, and then if you break that up even farther, and you break it up into lines or power plays, you break it like that – more from our centermen, like that – I think that our top two lines were not getting enough quality looks where it’s one-and-done or in the cycle part of it or the support part of it in the forecheck. We’re just not getting enough, so we’re kind of looking at it, ‘OK, who’s playing well, and who looks like they have a hot hand, and who’s worked it before,’ that sort of thing. I still like pairs. I still like Gaby and Kopi, I still like Ty and Jeff, and that’s how we do view it, right? Brownie’s getting lots of good shots and good looks and a lot of time with the puck, so we’ve just kind of got to look at all that. [Reporter: He does look faster and stronger so far.] Yeah. He’s had a really good camp, he’s carried it into his first two games. He’s probably been our best forward, right through, if you look at the last four weeks, for sure. … We thought we played a lot better last night, and we talked about it this morning, but we need results. You need the result. That’s a bad habit to get into, saying that you played well [in defeat]. That becomes an out clause. You don’t want to do that.