March 6 practice quotes: Darryl Sutter

On whether he has been happy with checking and structure in five-on-five play:
For sure. How could I not be? We remain, we go anywhere from one-to-six in goals against within it, so that’s a quarter of a goal. We’ve played well enough to win every game now since pre-Super Bowl. [Reporter: You don’t win every game, and you have game like yesterday where you basically out-chance them two-to-one, so how do you as a coach, because it is over an 82-game season, respond after that?] Same way we always have. What’s the big deal? It’s not that big a deal to me. It’s like I told the players today, as long as I think we busted our ass and tried to execute – every game’s not the same, Jon. They’re totally different. One of the best games we’ve played in the whole last month was the game in Anaheim. That’s as well as we could play, and they beat us. Give them a lot of credit. That’s a really good hockey club. Yesterday, we missed chances that, hey, at the end of the day we’ve got guys that haven’t scored much. Our team has to really check perfectly to maintain a spot, clearly.

On the first period in Brooklyn being one of the rare poor recent periods:
That [period] probably jumps out at me. That was a tough start. [Reporter: Other than that, there haven’t been too many clunkers along the way.] I didn’t like our game in Boston. [Reporter: What didn’t you like there, again?] We got out-chanced. If we get out-chanced, usually we get our asses handed to us. If you think that we scored nine goals, and the other team, in how we grade our chances, they had more than us. … Even look at last night, Anaheim, I don’t know if it’s the best in the league, but their first period goal differential, they’re 21-nothing, when you do it. If you just said they’d played 63 games, and you put all of their first periods together, and all their second periods and all their third periods together, there’s a reason they’re the three-time division champ and conference finalists. Their first periods this year, they’re 21-nothing, that’s how much they’ve outscored the opposition. So we came out of it tied. For us, it was really good.

On Rob Scuderi vying to get readjusted:
I’m not spending a whole lot of time with a guy who’s 36 or 37 adjusting. He’s played enough games and played enough teams and enough teammates and good situations, bad situations, I’m sure a lot. I’m not really talking to him about the game, I’m talking about how he’s doing and how he’s feeling. I thought he was better last night than he was the night before. So if he can play like he did last night tomorrow night, then we can say that that’s two consistent games in a row. … I mean, that’s what you want out of a veteran. It doesn’t matter if it’s Scuds or Vinny or Brownie. I mean, you want guys who are consistent. Hey, look at Lecavalier, how consistent he’s been for us, how good he’s been. That’s what you’re looking for, is just consistent. It’s not expecting something you’re not capable of. That’s what we want from Scuds. Scuds is clearly a guy that the less you notice him, the better he is, clearly. That hasn’t changed. He can still play There were some talking about that he couldn’t play the minutes, or he couldn’t play, well, he played every game last year, he played 19 minutes and he was on a good hockey team and a plus player, and he played every playoff game. He’s the only guy in that room, actually, him and Versteeg, that played a playoff game last year, so why isn’t he still able to do that? There’s no reason why shouldn’t be able to. He’s healthy and fits the program, so it’s just still whether you want to or not.

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