April 16 morning skate quotes: Darryl Sutter

On Marian Gaborik taking regular rotations at the morning skate:
He’ll go through warm-up, and he’ll declare himself. He’s been medically cleared, so it becomes a coach’s decision [and] a player’s declaration of whether he’s ready or not.

On how much lineup adjustments are based on players, or on the opposition:
I think depending on your position, obviously, talking about Gaborik, if that’s what you’re alluding to, injury situation, who they’re used to playing to, not so much the opponent. I think most teams that get to this spot, obviously we have some guys banged up on the back end, so we’re just going with it, but up front I think they’re familiar with each other over the course of time, and most teams that make the playoffs are running for the most part, they’re able to put four real solid lines together, and it’s sort of different by position, I would say. But very seldom it’s the opponent unless flat out, you’re kicking the [—-] out of me. I can make that decision pretty easy.

On what he likes about Jamie McBain:
Jamie’s been solid for us all year whenever we’ve put him in. It’s just a matter of the minutes. Obviously we have a top end with our guys, and if you look at last game, we go down to five, and we have a couple guys with very limited playoff experience in the lineup in that game in Schenn and Brayden, so it definitely affected us. So what do we expect out of Jamie? We expect him to be a really good competitor and move the puck. If he doesn’t, then we’re going to have a problem. [Reporter: It seems like he’s really excited about drawing in.] Man, I would be do. If the coach was telling me I wasn’t dressing for half the games this year and then he told me I was for the second game of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, and you said all year, ‘stay ready,’ and you know what? If you’re going to get to play in the playoffs, he might be a really good player in the playoffs for us, I would think that we’d all be really excited, so I would hope that he is. [Reporter: Yeah, almost 350 regular season games, and here you go.] It’s a big challenge for him. It’s a big test.

On whether Drew Doughty checks in with him periodically for updates and talks:
No, I think I check in with him. You know Drew. [Reporter: Can I ask how those meetings go?] It’s awesome. It’s not the coach-player thing. I mean, he loves to play. At the end of the day, he loves to play. I think you’ve seen that with a defenseman on their team, too.

On narrow margins, and how it affects the game plan against a familiar opponent:
Yeah, there are areas that we can be better at, and there are areas that we were really good at, so it’s a very fine line.

On Jonathan Quick’s performance in Game 1:
I don’t think either goalie had a lot of work in Game 1 for seven goals being scored, and as I said, it’s a high-scoring, wide-open series, so I don’t think either goalie had much work. It wasn’t much of a topic for the coaches.