Over the last few years the Kings have played more playoff games than any other NHL team. However, all of that experience didn’t help them in the opening 20 minutes of Game 1 on Thursday night. Even though several players had acknowledged the need to whether the storm early, in a building known for being loud and favoring the home team, the opening 20 minutes couldn’t have gone much worse for the visitors. Sharks captain Joe Thornton scored three minutes after the opening faceoff and when San Jose added two more goals (including one from rookie Tomas Hertl, pictured above) just before the first intermission, they had Darryl Sutter’s team searching for answers. A stronger third period by L.A. gave indications the Kings made some necessary adjustments, but the game had long been decided. After the final buzzer, here’s what was being said in both locker rooms – including quotes from Dustin Brown, Marian Gaborik, Joe Thornton, and both coaches…
Kings Head Coach Darryl Sutter on the first period:
“First period, chasing the puck. You’re not going to beat a team like that chasing the puck.”
Sutter on what contributed to the loss:
“Combination (of turnovers and speed). First off, coming into a building like this, you have to be prepared to face a little bit of an onslaught in the first part of the game. And, obviously, we didn’t do a good enough job getting our players prepared for that.”
Dustin Brown on the game:
“I think we weren’t ready to start. They’re up to a three-nothing lead and sloppy play, turnovers, bad changes, odd man rushes. We probably gave up more odd man rushes in the first period than we have in the last, I don’t know (month), yeah. So when you give a team like that opportunities on the odd man, they’re going to make you pay, and that’s what they did. It was more of the same in the second.”
Brown on Jonathan Quick:
“He made a lot of huge saves for us tonight. It just happened they had too many grade-A scoring chances. I think the puck came off mine, he was looking one way and it came out the other. We can’t give up that opportunity.”
Brown on if the loss was stunning:
“I don’t know if stunning is the right word, but whatever you want to use as an adjective, it’s just a result of us not being ready to play from the get go. Again, we talk about their offensive fire power. When we play into their hand like that, I mean it should be…the score should be that way if we’re going to turn the puck over and be sloppy.”
Willie Mitchell on the game:
“Not a start we wanted, no doubt about that. You know, this club plays well in this building, and in order to have success against them, early on, you’ve got to do the right things with the puck. We didn’t do that and paid the price dearly for it.”
Marian Gaborik on if it was stunning to be down 3-0:
“Obviously it wasn’t an ideal start. They scored three goals, then four. In the second period, we were just out of position and we were just giving up a lot of odd-man rushes and just making mistakes. I think when it was 3-0, we just tried to make something happen, but we didn’t play our game. In the third period, we talked about we have to come back and play our game, and we had a good period. We have to build on it and move by this one. Make sure w’re ready to play next game.”
Sharks Head Coach Todd McLellan on the game:
“It was a great game. We won. We’ll talk about the third period obviously. We were disappointed with the way we responded there. But for the most part, it was a real good game. And now we leave it alone. It’s over. It’s done.”
McLellan on the upcoming game Sunday:
“Regardless of what the score was, for or against us, we’ve got to move on now and prepare to get better. And be ready on Sunday. We only have to look back to last year, they went to St.Louis, and got down 2-0 and still came back and won four straight. They are a very good hockey club for a reason. And they showed it in the third period tonight.”
Joe Thornton on the game:
“It was a weird night. We got fortunate with a couple of those goals.”
Thornton on Andrew Desjardins’ line:
“They were banging early. You could feel their energy and that encited everybody else. But they started the whole shift for us tonight with a couple big bangs and that got us going. Got the early lead and then we went on from there.”
Marc-Edouard Vlasic on the Kings attempted comeback:
“We expected them to push back and they did. We got to be ready for game two. We had two great periods. Third one wasn’t that great. But we’ll be ready for Sunday.”
Vlasic on all lines scoring:
“It was great. We need that to go far to win the cup. You need depth and we showed that tonight.”
Raffi Torres on the attempted comeback:
“If you sit back against a team like that’s what they are going to do. We got to keep going after them and keep playing the way we know how to play. We can’t take breaks in the third. I think we got to learn from that.”
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