Quotes from LA Kings coach Todd McLellan following the team’s practice on Monday, January 18…
On what the team can do during practice to try and minimize penalties taken during a game
There are moments in the game where taking penalties comes into play a little bit more, usually when you’re fatigued and you’re scrambling. So we can extend drills, longer and longer, get them tired and then monitor what they’re doing with their sticks, their legs, their arms… Quite frankly, it comes down to being a little bit stronger mentally and being engaged. Line changes, too many men on the ice penalties, those happen during the year. But the ones that have occurred thus far are, we can clean that up in two seconds by just being sharper. It is a tough thing to practice and the more you talk about it, it seems like the more it happens. We’re addressing it right now and we’re gonna get better in that area.
On his recent comments regarding wanting better practice habits and if he was happy with how the team addressed those habits today
Perhaps the most important part of practice today was the prelude to it, the video and the review that we did from our game the other night. We looked at the good, the bad, and the things that we wanted to work on. Then we prepared a little bit for what’s going to be a very tough task in Colorado, back to back. They do a number of things really well and there’s no shortage of confidence on that team, but they’ve earned the right to be confident. We’ll have our hands full.
On those couple of individuals he mentioned wanting to meet with individually today (ed. note: a reference to McLellan’s comments during Saturday’s postgame scrum)
They did take place and that’s about all I’m going to share.
On the lineup at today’s practice
We took line rushes, we did 3-on-2s, we did a lot of backcheck drills. What was a little bit different about our practice today is we did not have Matt Luff, due to an injury. He won’t be available to us tomorrow. So instead of having five lines, we had four lines with maybe a couple extra on them.
On if there is a timetable for Luff to return from injury
Right now it’s day to day. He got banged up in the game the other night a little bit. He won’t play tomorrow against the Avalanche. We’ll see where he is a couple days down the road. I don’t think it’s real serious, but we’re still evaluating it.
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