Darryl Sutter’s end of season comments on the Kings, and a look to next year

End of season comments from Dustin Brown, Anze Kopitar, Mike Richards, Jonathan Quick and more have already been posted. So, let’s check in with the coach and see what he had to say. Here’s some of Darryl Sutter’s thoughts from his presser earlier today at TSC…

On if he has had a chance to decompress, and his thoughts on the season:

“I don’t think.. I’m not really decompressed, but we thought we had a really good season.”

On if it was harder losing this year after winning the Stanley Cup last year:

“It would have been harder not making the playoffs, right? I told the players yesterday we played 18 games in the playoffs this year. There’s (27) other teams that wished they played 18 games. Once you set that bar in terms of…as I’ve said all along, this really has no bearing on anything other than you’re a really good hockey club and you know how close the league is. All you have to do is look at the team we just played and the team that they’re playing. How close the league is.”

On if the Kings need to do anything to get to where the Blackhawks and Bruins are:

“I think we all went through similar…where the are now? I think we’re a similar team to Boston, I think they won the Stanley Cup but everyone knows their the same team… well not the same team, they have a different goalie. The most important thing is Tim Thomas. They won with one goalie, won with the other, it’s nice for everybody to generalize and say that. I think Chicago is obviously a different type of team than ours, for the most mart, we’re one of the youngest team, we’ we’re the two youngest teams that made the playoffs if you do it from personnel actual guys that play. That would be the similarity. The difference would probably be they scored a few more goals this year then we did. But actually, it didn’t effect us at all, it’s one of the reasons we did have a really good year, quite honest, our goals for we went from last to third in the conference. That’s why you can’t ask that question because two coaches, right? You can’t ask that question to players because quite honest when we say Boston, every team changes. If it didn’t change, why didn’t Chicago win? Everyone knows why they didn’t win.”

On what was missing this year:

“What’s missing? I don’t think anythings missing. We did win this year. We did. You don’t think we won? You don’t think Anaheim won this year? We win. You go from 30 to 16 to 8 to 4 to 2 to 1. You can’t win the Stanley Cup each year, I know that as.. I don’t like going on this,, but there’s some awfully spoiled people in the media and awfully spoiled people in this organization…that think that…they played more playoff games in the last year than any other team in hockey. I have no problem with anything other than we’re a really young team and we can get better from an individual standpoint. You learn that… with the way it sets up in terms of schedule and playoffs you have to be able to keep your roster or your lineup that’s consistent. If you look at the difference between Chicago and Los Angeles, you’d say that Chicago was a healthier team going into the last round.”

On if this year was a tougher coaching job because of the shortened season:

“I think if we go around the league, every coaching staff is going to say that because of the 48 game schedule. It was something that I’d done before so, you know, so you have some familiarity with it whether that helped or not, I don’t know, but at least you’re familiar with it. But was it tougher? Sure it’s tougher. Our players were awesome with it, there was no hangover, there was only positives taken from it. The only negative from the short summer last year was guys that didn’t start the year. Greene, Mitchell, Kopitar and quite honestly Jonathan until probably January and February.”

On Drew Doughty’s season:

“I think he had a good year. I think he was really typical with our team. I think that we had a young defense that had a really good season. You can’t minimize the fact that our goals for went up and our goals against went up also. What we want to do as a group is cut our goals against a little bit. So is that a reflection of Drew Doughty? Not really. It’s a reflection of our team.”

On what’s next in terms of organizational meetings:

“We’re doing that now, we met as a team, as a group yesterday and did as much medical work as we could as a group. We’ll do more from an individual coach-player thing. It’s basically reviewing their seasons and what we can do in the off season as individuals. Then we’ll put that together as a staff and once we know where, you can get a better read on what your team is..not until that doesn’t happen for… hey, you have to remember last year we played until tomorrow, so we don’t have the advantage of what most teams have. We’re trying to lock it all in as quick as we can from a coaching and player side. W did a really good job of that last summer and that’s what we’ll try and do again. We have to wait to see, obviously, what our roster will be before we do that.”

On what young players like Tyler Toffoli and Jake Muzzin should take from this experience:

“They’re going to have to take 100 days of being stronger athletes, the next 100 days. For them to help us next year, they’re going to have to be better athletes, very simple…What do they take from it? Hopefully as we meet with them over the next two or three days we’re going to find out. It’s not something I’m going to generalize. I know for certain though that you have to be physically and mentally as close to 100% as you can to play in the NHL…There’s not much line to draw there.”

On if the plan is to still test Toffoli at left wing:

“Plan is to get him stronger first. Then we’ll see if he’s a good winger in the American Hockey League or a winger in the National Hockey League. That will be the first step.”

The other ‘major’ news item discussed was the fact Robyn Regehr had surgery on his elbow today. Although it wasn’t revealed exactly when the injury took place, it was noted the problem plagued him throughout the playoffs.

Additional end of season notes and quotes from GM Dean Lombardi and several other Kings players can be found at the links below.

Follow @mayorNHL

End of season comments from Rob Scuderi – now what?

End of season thoughts from Kings captain Dustin Brown

Sunday media call – comments from Jonathan Quick

Sunday media call – Anze Kopitar says he’s not injured, doesn’t need surgery

Sunday media call – comments from Mike Richards

Sunday media call – Lombardi on future contracts for Voynov and/or Scuderi

Sunday media call – Lombardi’s latest update on the status of Willie Mitchell’s future

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