On indications he receives when Drew Doughty is at the tip-top of his game:
It looks the same to me as it does to you every night when he plays half the game, plays every situation. [Reporter: So, is he different, then? Are there not as many fluctuations in his game than there would be with a different type of a player?] He’s a great player. These guys don’t have much ebb-and-flow in their game. They’re pretty consistent. That’s why they are.
On having earned points in three straight during the extended road trip:
We don’t play much different every game. I know it sounds repetitious, but we go play our game and then try and figure who the other team’s lineup is and try and figure out who ours is and go from there. We don’t put a whole lot of emphasis on other than being ourselves.
On not having Tyler Toffoli in the lineup:
We’ve played the whole trip without [a full assortment of players]. We’ve had guys get hurt every game and finish games and nobody knows about it. So now we announce that he’s not playing for a while, so it gives somebody else an opportunity and have guys that just move up a little bit in the lineup. When you look at it, we got Gaborik back, so hopefully he can get going for us. Brownie came back from injury, hopefully we can get Cliffy back from injury and just keep moving guys around. It’s not based on one player.
On whether he’d advocate doing away with morning skates:
It’s up to the players. If you were a hockey fan 30 years ago or 40 years ago there weren’t morning skates, but once track suits came out, we thought they were sexy, so we’d go to morning skates to wear our tracksuits. And then they came out with helmets, so guys started wearing their helmets. It doesn’t matter to me. It’s pretty much optional for us, but today’s optional, everybody skates. Tomorrow we’re in Edmonton, so we’ll see a few guys skate. It’s not that important. [Reporter: Did you like it when you played?] As I said, we didn’t normally have them. You’ve got to remember, it’s a little bit differnet now. You’re chartering and accommodating, all those things. So if you had a choice not to go to the rink, play the day of the game, I would say that would be my choice, also.
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