October 15 postgame quotes: Doughty, Kuemper

Drew Doughty, on the win:
[joined in progress]…we actually, I thought we played a little better tonight. We had a better start, that was for sure. We weren’t great in the second and we let them come back a little bit at the end, but overall we carried the momentum and started off really well tonight.

Doughty, on the special teams success:
I think power play, we’re working on it a lot more than we have in the past. We basically work on it every single morning skate, and we’ve worked on it in between games, too. PK, we’ve always been one of the best in the league at PK. We take so much pride in our defensive game. Every single guy in this room, defense comes first to us, and that’s why we’ve been one of the best defensive teams and best PKing teams in the league the last few years.

Doughty, on his shorthanded goal:
You know, it’s tough to be in that situation. I’m not usually used to being in a two-on-one situation, and to be honest, I couldn’t even see the puck when he passed it, and then luckily I saw it at the last second and just tried to get some wood on it, and luckily it went five-hole because I just tried to get a piece of the puck. Great pass by Kopi. You expect him to do that every game, and he never disappoints us.

Doughty, on whether the team has the same confidence in Darcy Kuemper as Jonathan Quick:
Yeah, it doesn’t matter who’s in net. We obviously went the season without Quickie, basically, and I thought we played pretty well for a lot of it. Darcy’s a great goalie, a great person. Really happy to have him on our team, and we have the exact same confidence in him as we do in Quickie. He could be a starting goalie in this league, no problem, and to have him back there and have him practice for us to work on our stuff, it was great.

Doughty, on whether he felt like a forward on his goal:
Yeah, it feels good. I’ve always wanted to be a forward again, but I don’t know if that’ll ever happen. When I get my chance to get up there, I’m going to get up there.

Darcy Kuemper, on the win:
It was nice to get the win. It felt like I hadn’t played in a while, just because of our schedule, and it had been a while since the preseason. Some things I could sharpen up, but it was nice to get a win. The team battled hard, and it’s pretty exciting to get the first one.

Kuemper, on when he found out he’d be starting:
I didn’t know it was going to be tonight, but earlier in the week they told me I would play one of the two. I knew a start was on the horizon. A couple days ago.

Kuemper, on a busy second period, and when he began to feel comfortable in the game:
I felt pretty comfortable in the start. Been working on good habits in practice. Although you come into a game and you haven’t played in a while and you need to clean up a few things, if you stick to the basis of your game, it makes things a little bit easier and it makes you feel a little bit more comfortable in there.

Kuemper, on how Los Angeles’ systems are different from Minnesota’s:
There are a lot of similarities. A few tweaks here and there, but nothing too crazy, so it’s been pretty easy to pick up on.

Kuemper, on his own performance:
I felt pretty good. Like I said, there are a few areas that I could sharpen up, but I felt pretty good about it. I thought the guys defended really hard and it made it easy to come in for not playing for a while, so hats off to them. Just very happy with the win. [Reporter: What are those areas that you want to clean up?] Just little things like tracking the puck and getting there a little bit quicker. A little bit more control to your game, but that comes. The more you play, the easier that gets.

Kuemper, on the strong start to the season:
It’s always great to get off to a great start. Going 4-0-1 in the first five, that’s huge momentum to build off of. Now we’ve just got to keep working because the other teams are going to be improving, so we’ve got to the same. But with that being said, it’s great momentum and it’s a great start.

Kuemper, on whether Jonathan Quick is a bigger talker with him than the media:
He’s pretty good with me. Even tonight I was bouncing ideas off him between periods and during TV timeouts. He’s great to talk to because he knows how the team plays and what our job is and how we play within that system, so he’s been a great help to me. [Reporter: So it’s a goaltender union thing.] Something like that, yeah.

-Lead photo via Adam Pantozzi/NHLI