On whether the Kings’ road success in recent years is due in part to depth:
I think when we have everybody in the lineup, I’d say that. I’d say we’re four lines deep and [have] good goaltending and generally good special teams. That’ll add up usually. It gets you points. Just thinking off the top of my head, I think our home and road records have been pretty much the same. [Reporter: Do you sense these guys get a kick out of that, going into a place, that mentality with everybody against you and all that?] Well, we’re really not in that situation right now. We’re trying to get our young defensemen in and all those things. You can’t take much out of the past right now. I mean, we’re just trying to build our game this year.
On how he plans to use Jamie McBain tonight:
We’ve got a bunch of sick players, so we’ll see tonight who’s playing. [Reporter: A bunch, meaning ‘three or four?’] A bunch of players, yeah. [Reporter: How are you feeling? You OK?] Me? If I was any better, I could play. Why not?
On the break in the schedule affording the team to work with a new player it brought in:
I’ve said it lots. We didn’t bring a new player in. He played five games in the very same system, very same message. So we didn’t bring a new player in. He didn’t start practice three days ago. He played five games, otherwise he wouldn’t be here. We’ve had several breaks like this already where we’ve played a lot, heavy schedule in terms of games, and then the two and three day breaks between. And if you look at it, we play three games in three and a half days now and then we’ll get two and a half out, with the way it works, to play again. So it’s just the way the schedule’s set up this year, and it’s caught us a couple times, for sure – not the break, the schedule part has because of injuries and all that. I know it’s an old song, but we just stay in the game, stay in the moment as much as you can.
On the team battling illness:
I don’t like talking about it…It’s sort of what the popular thing around the league now for guys to use as an excuse, and we don’t. [Reporter: I know because a couple of guys were under the weather on the trip. Is that something that kind of carried over from there, or is it a new thing?] No, we’ve had three days off…You’ve just got to get through it. It’s what you do.
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