Comments from Anze Kopitar after the Kings eliminated the Blues and advanced to the second round…
On how good it feels to come back from a 2-0 deficit:
“It feels good. I mean we realize we have some room for improvement too, and you know, and shocker, Quicky came out huge for us again the last couple of minutes. Made a couple of key saves and we were able to hold on. So that was obviously a good thing. We didn’t want to go back to St. Louis that’s for sure. And save ourselves a few hours of flying. So now we get to enjoy a day, and relax, and get ready for the next series.”
On what he thinks of the criticisms about being tired or injured through the series:
“It doesn’t matter. We just won the first round. So get ready for round number two.”
On his individual game:
“I felt okay. I felt like I didn’t manage the puck that well, but like I said, there’s some room for improvement. So we’ll make sure we clean that up before the next round.”
On travel being easier in the second round given they’ll play Anaheim or San Jose:
“Yeah, we’ll stay I guess in the same time zone. You know, if it’s Anaheim, it’s just a bus ride. So that’s great. It’s definitely not going to be a long travel.”
On the team’s ability to view the series on a game-by-game basis:
“Well you can only win one game at a time. So it doesn’t matter what the series is. We came back here with being down two games. You know, we knew it was a gut-check time. We pulled it together. Quicky came up huge in Game 3. In Game 4 we were able to give him a few goals to support him. And then went into St. Louis, put in a pretty good performance and won it in OT. We all know that they’re building’s not easy to play in. That was the key I guess.”
Bonus comments from Mike Richards…
– Richards on if they are back at the same momentum as last year: “I think we’re confident right now, a year ago I can’t compare to what went on back then because I barely remember it to be honest with you. We’re confident, we still have some work to do. I think we played well enough to win the series. I think we can get better and that was our goal from day one in the series, improve right through to the last day, some work to do and some time to get some bumps and bruises and get some practice in.”
– Richards on the possibility of playing the Ducks or Sharks: “I don’t know, I’m going to sit back and watch and see who we play, both teams obviously have world class players on it and world class goaltenders, so it’s going to be tough either way.”
RELATED CONTENT: Dustin Penner comments after Kings advance to second round
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