Drew Doughty on why it was important to beat the Red Wings

First batch of quotes following the LA Kings 2-1 win over Detroit…

– Drew Doughty on recording seven hits tonight: “They have so many skilled guys that if you give them too much time and space they’re going to make you look foolish. Especially a guy like Datsyuk. I was pretty much against him every single time today. So when a guy like that is coming down on you, you have no option but to look right at his chest and take the body, or like I said, they’re going to make you look bad.”

– Doughty on the difference in playing in front of Jonathan Bernier vs. Jonathan Quick: “I don’t know if there’s really a big difference. They both have different styles of goaltending, but in our eyes it’s just, they’re both going to make the save. We’re just as confident in both of them. They’ve both played fantastic for us, and whoever is back there, like I said, we’re just going to have full confidence in them that they’re going to make that stop.

– On getting redemption tonight after letting the last one get away in Detroit: “Yeah, that and this is just the end of our home stand where we haven’t been at home at all until this little stand here. That made it that much more important. But definitely losing with four seconds left in a game, we weren’t happy about that. We should have at least gotten one point there. So to be able to get two back here; that makes us feel a little bit better I guess.”

– On feeling like the Kings kind of got away with one tonight with the late rally after poor play most of the game: “I thought the first five-on-three was alright. We had some good shots, they just weren’t getting through. But yeah, the first period was bad. The second period was better. Then the third period we got even better again. So that’s one thing we’ve been struggling with is our starts. So we gotta make sure we’re well prepared for the games.”

– On the urgency of getting points in the shortened season: “I think we’ve sensed that urgency since the first couple games. Darryl keeps telling us we’re finally in a playoff spot tonight. We weren’t for so long, but then the next day the other teams play and they jump ahead of us. We’re in a playoff spot right now, but we’re not finished with that. We want to get all the way up there. We want to be at the top of our division, top of the conference, and we’re definitely going to have to play with that urgency in order to do that.”

– On the team’s energy level in the third period: “We wanted that win. We didn’t score on that five-on-three in the second, and everyone was pretty disappointed about that. That’s part of it. At the same time, we really didn’t get any momentum going for ourselves. So, when we finally got that second one in the third period, we made sure we were going to score on that, and I thought from there out we played a lot better.”

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