December 13 morning skate quotes: Darryl Sutter

On the key towards managing players during a stretch of nine straight road games:
You just go one at a time. It’s not that complicated. I’ve been through several long trips over a long career, so you see how guys play. It’s a good challenge for some of our players – guys that maybe haven’t played in this building very much or played this team very much. Again, it’s interesting to look at the number of players who haven’t played that many games in Buffalo or against Buffalo or things like that.

On Kyle Clifford potentially re-entering the lineup:
Yeah, I said it before the last game. We put those guys in, wanted to get them a game before the trip. We’ve got lots of guys – touch wood right now. Let ‘em play.

On whether he has to “worry” about Drew Doughty and Anze Kopitar if they’re slumping:
How do you mean, ‘worry?’ [Reporter: Situationally, if they’re struggling, if they’re slumping, do you just let ‘em roll?] We really haven’t seen either one of them slump since I’ve been here.

On whether he sees the “torch being passed” to a new generation of superstars:
Yeah, but I don’t think it’s quite being passed yet. [Reporter: That Crosby guy’s still pretty good.] Jump too high, you might fall off. Heck, those guys you brought up, I don’t think they’re quite passing it yet. You just talked about two guys on our team, I don’t think those guys are into the passing the torch deal. Do you think Sidney Crosby – he’s still the best player in the game by a lot. … Hey, whatever qualifies for your opinion, basically who you think the best players are, but the best players are the guys who’ve won championships, are still at the top of their game, still on the top teams – those are still the best players. [Reporter: Fair enough. Pierre brought up something that we don’t get to see in the East, though, like Anze versus Getzlaf or Anze versus Thornton. We don’t get to see that much, and is there something to those marquee face-to-face match-ups that we don’t get to see a lot of in the East?] I think there are dominant centermen a lot that play against each other. It’s not like they check each other, they play against each other. Obviously there are three or four dominant defensemen in the game that win Norrises and win championships. … If that’s what you’re talking about, not seeing guys out West, I’d say that would be the predominant thing.

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