Here’s what coach Darryl Sutter had to share following the Kings’ morning skate in advance of Game 3…
On if being at home will allow him to get away from some mismatches (i.e. Kopitar’s line against Bouwmeester and Pietrangelo):
“It really didn’t affect us at all. Your best players play against their best players. They’re not really in a checking role, and neither are we. Best players are going to play a lot.”
On if he’s making defensive changes (i.e. putting Alec Martinez back in the line-up):
“No, I mean it’s a question you always ask, and if I came here early enough and I was one of you, I’d just go watch the other team skate and then I’d say ‘Is Quick starting? Is Bernier starting?’ So…”
On if there’s a difference between the Kings’ play at home versus on the road:
“We haven’t played at home in the playoffs yet. We played well in St. Louis, but we didn’t win. So I’m going to say it again, there really isn’t much difference. If everything’s based on the regular season, then the same teams would do everything every year. You’d win the Stanley Cup every year, and you wouldn’t make the playoffs every year. And you’d lose in the first round every year. We’d win two rounds. Really, when you think about it, I don’t know what bearing it has on anything. The only thing I take out of the regular season against St. Louis is Elliott coming in smoking hot, right?”
On what they need to do to get a win against Elliott:
“We’ve been limited 5-on-5 to very few shots. We’ve had some really good scoring chances in overtime. Quite honestly our best scoring chances were in overtime. But that’s St. Louis’ M.O. I think us and them gave up the fewest shots in the conference. So we have to find ways to get more at the net. Because more is better. What’s that commercial about those kids, with that little girl? ‘More. Can we get less of more, then we want more.’ Just do it by straight stats on the two teams. We’ve had like 50-something shots on net. Three guys have half of ‘em. Brownie, Willie and Jeff have half our shots. So you need to get a little bit more out of everybody.”
On it being tough for defensemen to get shots on both sides:
“Yeah, they’ve outshot us. I think we’ve had 10 total in two games. Obviously Drew’s a key guy there.”
On how much of an impact the last change should have:
“On whistles it does. You can’t change on the fly. If you change on the fly in today’s game, you’re chasing – there’s somebody walking down the side, pounding. Both teams see that.”
On if ‘must win’ is a term he’s used or likes to use:
“I haven’t used it yet. I’ll keep it in mind, though.”
On the general message going into tonight:
“We want to win some matchups, win some one-on-ones. We haven’t done a good job of that. We could be just as easily 2-0, 1-1. Just as easily. So we’ll continue to slug it out.”
On if the lack of scoring is attributable to what they’re doing, or what the Kings aren’t doing:
“I think both. It goes to both quality and percentage. We know full well that 5-on-5, it’s tight between both teams. There’s not much going on. It’s basically hard stuff. It’s a hard game.”
On what happened in the third period on Thursday night:
“We were too slow in the neutral zone, clearly. It wasn’t just one guy. It was we just got too slow in the neutral zone. Five-on-five, most of it is – there’s a lot of chipping and races to pucks. When you don’t have it to do that, then you end up defending.”
On if he’d like to see more four-man attacks tonight:
“Perfect. You’ve got to have the puck to do it. Everybody would like to do that. Barret did it. Ask him. He liked it.”
And then the ending…
“I’ve got to go watch their practice to see if they’re changing any defensemen.”
RELATED CONTENT: Game 3 morning skate comments from Kyle Clifford
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Oh Sutter. And wait, was he calling Doughty out for not blocking shots or something? I’m always confused when it comes to Sutter
First off, I don’t think Sutter calls out any of his players to the media, that’s one of the things I love about him most.
But if one wants to read into the quotes, you could reasonably argue he’s calling out everyone with the exception of Brown, Williams and Carter.
@ Coach Sutter, if you think back to Vancouver series (Gm. #3 in particular) last year and your pairing of Fraser, Nolan, and King really gave you 4 lines of harmony and allowed you to pick your opposing defensemen match ups etc… I feel they could be very beneficial vs. Reaves, Cracknell….. so with Kopitar,Brown, and Williams – Richards, Carter, and Penner – Stoll, Lewis, and Clifford/Richardson/Toffoli. That proved to be and unstoppable group of forwards.
Pure coaching genius then and now, please don’t forget about it!!!! I feel it cushions the loss of Greene and Mitchell.