Doughty: “We know we can’t let it go to a Game 7”

For all the deserved attention the United Center gets as a great environment for hockey, Staples Center has erupted multiple times during this year’s playoff run. The 5-on-3 penalty kill against San Jose, the third period in Game 6 against Anaheim and Tanner Pearson’s empty netter against Chicago come to mind as part of the decibel-raised fervor that have made the Kings’ home among the most difficult places for opposing teams to win a hockey game – and the Kings have played a touch better than their 5-3 home record indicates.

It is very, very important, obviously, that the Kings win Friday’s Game 6 if they are to advance to the Stanley Cup Final for the second time in three years. Similar to the 2012 series against New Jersey, Los Angeles does not want to have to head on a long flight to play a road game in an elimination setting with their opponents looking to capitalize on a change of momentum and fortune.

“We know we can’t let it go to a Game 7,” Drew Doughty said. “They’re a good team in their home arena. They feed off their fans. It’s a tough arena to play in. So we need to win tomorrow. No matter what, this game has to be ours. It’s so important for us to advance to the Stanley Cup Final, that we win this game. If we give them this game, they’re going to have so much more life and they’re going to be a different team. We need to take the energy away from them.”

Drew Doughty, on Game 5:
It was a good game. I thought the game got better as it went along. Maybe a little sloppy at the beginning, but I think our team didn’t show our best game. That’s for sure. We still could have won, so that’s the bright side to that. But for a Western Conference Final game, I thought we put on a pretty good show.

On the first overtime period taking only 26 minutes to play:
It felt fast and it’s kind of nice without those timeouts. Sometimes timeouts just kind of throw a rut in your momentum and sometimes you’re supposed to be and you get switched around. It felt good. The pace was fast. The whistles were quick. It was fun. That was a lot of fun to play in. Just a better outcome would have been better.

On whether they had better chances than Chicago in overtime:
I thought we were trading, kind of back and forth. I don’t know if we had better chances or not. But when you’re playing against a team like the Chicago Blackhawks, you can’t be trading chances like that. If you give them the rush game, when we’re playing it back to them, they’re going to beat us that way. We need to get back to the LA Kings style of hockey – check them hard and get the puck in and cycle a lot.

On whether the Kings identify with Chicago’s intangible championship aspects:
We know how good of a team they are. We know that they know how to win. We also know that they took our cup back from us last year. So now it’s our turn. We want to eliminate this team. They eliminated us last year in Game 5 or whatever it was. We know it’s our turn to return the favor. We need to go into Staples tomorrow believing that we can eliminate this team and [do the stuff?]

On what previous experiences are helping the team at this point in the postseason:
We’ve had a lot of the same guys in both runs. As a team, we know what it takes to get to that level and to get to that point and we know how easy it is to lose too. You need to be on your game every night, every shift. Every second counts. And if you take that one shift off, it can hurt you. You saw that happen a couple times last night. We know what it takes. We’ve got our leaders who can lead the way in that department and I think they’ve been doing a good job. We just need everyone to follow and play our style of game.

On what they can do to prevent fatigue:
I don’t think we’re tired. Maybe your legs are tired the day after a game or something, like that. But the next day is a new day. Adrenaline kicks in and your heart doesn’t get tired. That’s what we feed off of, our energy from that and just playing with a will to win.