October 13 practice notes, Darryl Sutter quotes

Good afternoon from El Segundo, where the Kings took the ice at 10:00 a.m., and after a rather lengthy conversation near the whiteboard, emerged under the following forward alignment:

White: King-Kopitar-Toffoli
Blue: Pearson-Purcell-Carter-Lewis
Yellow: Clifford-Brown-Shore-Nolan
Purple: Andreoff-Dowd-Setoguchi

It’s a general rule that the game day morning skate is a better harbinger of what to expect, but don’t be surprised to see changes for tomorrow’s home opener. Keep in mind that there are different alignments at home and on the road, where Darryl doesn’t have the benefit of last change. But, yeah: significant changes.

Darryl Sutter, on Jonathan Quick’s status:
He’s going to be out. Obviously he’s at the doctor now. So he’ll be out. Once we get the doctor’s report, better timeline on it. So obviously we’ll recall a goalie, that’s for sure. [Reporter: Billy looked good out there?] Billy? He was the second-best goalie. That’s not bad. That’s not a bad thing.

Sutter, on what he had known about Jeff Zatkoff prior to this season:
Well, he came from this organization, so we knew him. He’s an NHL goalie. Obviously Peter’s probably the guy that’ll come, and between Zat and Peter, they’ll win games for us. Been down this road before with Jonathan. [Reporter: When he got hurt in Buffalo, the team really picked it up nicely and didn’t seem to miss a beat.] Jonathan’s obviously a special player. You just don’t replace that. It’s no different than any other star player in your lineup. You just don’t replace it or expect somebody to play the same way or do the same things, but we also know that we’re quite capable at that position. [Reporter: What has to come together? Because that last time a couple years ago, the team had points in 17 of its first 19 games when Jonathan went down. Is there any commonality that you see in terms of leadership, in terms of production?] It’s quite a different team, Jon, so I wouldn’t make any sort of comparables. It’s a totally different team, a totally different age group. There’s not much correlation or way of comparing the two.

Sutter, on Peter Budaj:
I think that he’s in a different situation this year than he was last year. Last year he was an unrestricted player basically on a tryout and earned his way into a very prominent role where he had to play almost or every game in Ontario, and he earned a contract out of that. He’s an experienced, proven guy.

Sutter, on the performance in San Jose:
I said after the game I thought we played pretty well. I think that it’s a tough rink, a tough team to play. We made a couple mistakes. Obviously we’re not a team that’s going to be a high-scoring team. We made a mistake in the third period, a veteran mistake, that cost us the hockey game. We’re going to have to really play mistake-free to win hockey games. That’s clear.

Sutter, on looking to cut down scoring chances against:
Well, it was the first game, so compared to what? [Reporter: When you take a look at the stats at the end of a game, and you’re looking at quality scoring chances-] I’d like more for. I mean, against, that’s the way it’s going to be. We’d like more for. We have to expect more out of each other in that area if we’re capable of doing that.