Following up on our one-on-one conversation with Kings GM Dean Lombardi yesterday, where he offered some thoughts on his sit down meeting with Drew Doughty after Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final, now we get the defense man’s side of things…
On the distractions a couple of years ago:
“I guess distractions last time were trying to get tickets for certain people. There weren’t enough tickets and just stuff like that going on. Basically, we talked about it as a group and we said let the families deal with it. Get your mom in charge. Get your wife in charge, whatever it needs to be and completely forget about that rather than having to go for breakfast with them or something like that. Just focus on the team. You know you have a lot of time to see your family and friends after we hopefully win and right now it’s just focusing on this game.” [Reporter: Do you have family here?] “Yeah, of course. I got five people coming into town, so I’m pretty excited to play in front of them and hopefully I’ll celebrate with them after.” [Reporter: Your parents?] “My parents and my billet parents and my girlfriend are coming. It’ll be fun.” [Reporter: Are you going to see them at all…?] “I’ll see them after the game, regardless of the outcome. I’ll see them after the game. I’ll let them be on their own for today and deal with their own stuff.”
On the importance of closing it out tonight:
“Once we won that first game in the San Jose series, we kind of had a feeling we were going to come back and win that series. You could see it in their eyes and their team and their captains and leaders that they were worried about us coming back. So we don’t want to give these guys any life. They’re a good hockey team. They’re here in the Stanley Cup Final for a reason. We can’t let them back in this series. We need to win tonight. This game’s the most important game of our lives, of this season especially. It’s a must-win.”
On if winning the Cup and an Olympic gold medal in the same year was a plausible dream back in October:
“No. You always think about that it’s possible, but you don’t think it’s going to happen. It’s so hard to win both trophies. I still haven’t won the second one yet, so you know, I’m hoping that we do do that. It would be great to have both of those, but right now, I’m just thinking of it one period at a time and waiting for that puck drop.”
On if this end result was in the picture back in January when the team was struggling:
“We always knew that eventually the scoring would come. We have a lot of talent up front. We have a lot of guys who can score goals. We have overall a good team and we knew that we didn’t have to think too much and change anything. We knew when Playoffs came around we’d step up.”
On his conversation with Dean Lombardi after Game One:
“It was with Blakey too.” [Reporter: He wanted to talk about the Carter situation?] “We didn’t talk about that. We just talked about making sure I had my emotions in check and getting mad at the refs was basically what it was. They always enjoy my emotion. They think it’s a good thing because it shows my competitiveness, but they want me to use it in the right way.”
On if Lombardi being like a father figure or shepherd watching his flock:
“Dean always comes across like that. He loves all his players like they are his own kids. He treats us all the same way. He wants the best for us and the best for the team. It’s always good that if you need something, he’s always there.” [Reporter: How often does he want to have those talks with you?] “Not too often. Probably go out there a few times a year and that’s it. A lot of times it’s just to shoot the breeze, it’s not anything negative or anything positive. It’s just a chat.”
MORE: Lombatrdi’s thoughts on the meeting with Doughty, exchange with Carter on the bench
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[…] Prior to Game 4 of this year’s Final, Doughty said that kind of caring is par for the course for their GM. […]