January 23 morning skate quotes: Darryl Sutter

On the importance of winning faceoffs as part of a team’s possession game:
I think it’s really important, but if you look at our numbers this year, it might be hard to figure out because we are middle of the pack in face offs depending on night or game, and we’re still a high-possession team. I think it’s important. The key in it is to be dominant through your lineup, and if you have one or two guys, it’s hard on the road to get that guy out a lot because of icings and things like that, but when you have three guys, for sure, or maybe four, it makes a big difference, and even more important in our division, when you look at it.

On Luke Schenn:
It’s still got to fit. It’s still the partner thing. I think that we really like Muzz and Marty together. We’ve had to split ‘em up a lot because of the lefties and Luke being a righty, so Marty’s had to play a lot with Luke. It’s still really a work in progress. I think Luke on his own in terms of what we expect and what we see is fine, but it’s still about the six guys. It’s not one guy, it’s not Drew and the rest or Luke and the rest, it’s still a lot that goes into it in terms of your five-on-five. We haven’t had a lot of four-on-four since we got him or three-on-three. A lot of it is special teams, things like that, so there’s so much more that goes into it than just the individual performance.

On the snowstorm’s impact on east coast games:
It’ll have a bigger impact on the football game. [Reporter: What’s your favorite weather story?] Oh my goodness. I can remember a Chicago Stadium game – free coffee. That was a big deal. [Reporter: That was a long time ago!] So that tells you how cold it was. Like, can you imagine getting free coffee in Chicago Stadium? Oh, I remember some of those bus trips coaching in Saginaw and standing up with the driver and the driver watching the yellow line and me watching the white line. Gotta get there, right? Not like now when they cancel games. You got there. … I think in Calgary, didn’t we have a game, in Colorado, maybe, canceled? I know we had some kids – Dustin Boyd was one, and he had to stay at the airport in Denver because the highways were all closed. We brought him in or were sending him – one of the two, I can’t remember – and him and … a couple kids, they had to stay in the airport for like a day because you couldn’t get out of the airport.