March 30 practice quotes: Darryl Sutter

On fighting and endurance:
If that’s important to the players, then it is. I mean, fighting doesn’t necessarily mean ‘fighting, dropping your gloves, fighting,’ fighting means second and third efforts and digging in and your top players and your captains having really strong examples in terms of their work and their effort. That’s what’s more important to me. [Reporter: Do you wish you had seen that earlier, or have you seen it?] This team has a lot of guys that have not played and they’re used to, quite honest, weekend schedules, or had somebody else back ‘em up lots or haven’t played and didn’t come out of a long junior grind, things like that. That’s guys that are making mistakes. That’s why we’re in this position.

On Nick Shore’s performance and the team’s perfect penalty kill:
Well, he didn’t kill that much. I think we used eight guys killing penalties. Obviously if Andy could’ve stayed and played longer, we could’ve come into more of a four-line deal. That’s it. Guys are going to get rewarded for work, and Shoresy going to work. He wanted to play in Edmonton. We just felt we’d wait another day on him.

On last night’s lineup changes:
Four guys that hadn’t played the night before – not that hard to figure out. If you were in Edmonton, you’d seen four guys that didn’t play, and you’d seen in Calgary four guys that did. So tomorrow, just keep moving along with that.

On the challenges knowing that the Kings will need help to remain in the playoff race:
I’ve said it. Not [road apples]. I said we’d stay in the race. Hopefully we can get to April and still be in the race. Win, place, show, also ran, right?

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