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NHL WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: KINGS v BLACKHAWKSMay 22, 2014Darryl SutterLOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Practice Day Q. (No microphone.) COACH SUTTER: I think we avoided a lot of damage early in the game. I don't think it was momentum, it was more once we were down two, and we're good at that, our ability to just sort of stay with it and stick with the game. Then obviously Justin's goal at the end of the second. So you're going in 2‑1 into the third, then you score in the power play early, then again. That is where your momentum shift is. Q. Can something like that be discouraging to the opponent? COACH SUTTER: I don't think so. If it was a first round or not a playoff game, might be different. But Chicago, Los Angeles, I don't think you're going to get discouraged one way or the other. You don't win easy. You go through a lot of adversity, a lot of different situations during games, during the series, during the season. You're used to always being pushed under. You just kind of stay with it. Q. Is there something that you say to the guys in intermission? COACH SUTTER: Quite honestly, you hear about all these big speeches that coaches make and all that. You know what, the players are getting the (bleeped) out of them, they're sweating and bleeding. They don't need, quite honestly, all that. They don't need some coach coming in there yelling and hollering. I don't get that. That's not me. I don't do that. If there's something to be said, it's honest, get it out. It's not some great words or some great rallying cry between periods. You don't get that far into the season... You trust what they're doing. There's that group of guys, and you trust what they're doing. If you have to reinforce something, reinforce it. If not, stay out of their way. Q. After the game is over, do you say anything then like, Congratulations? COACH SUTTER: We had to win in Chicago, otherwise we have no chance of winning the series. We had to win a game in Chicago at some point. It's a tough building to win in. I think it was Jarret that said it yesterday, You have to win in tough buildings. If you're not a division winner, other teams have the extra game at home. We have already done that with San Jose. That was a tough rink. Anaheim was a tough rink. You don't steal games in playoffs. You can do it in the regular season because of schedule or maybe lining up something like that, but in playoffs you don't steal games. There's no tricks to it. It's pretty much straight up, wait till high noon and get out there. Q. When you look at the adversity this team has had to deal with, compare it to 2012, how much more resilient was that team? COACH SUTTER: That team wasn't in the playoffs. They were in and out of a playoff spot right till the last day of the year, I think. I'm not sure when it was. There were several times when the team was not in the playoff spot. That's adversity. The toughest part of the league now, and the league has changed in terms of ‑‑ from the lockout till now, it's changed how you make the playoffs. I mean, there's six teams, division winner, two wild cards. It's changed a lot. The adversity is your schedule, the way it's changed, the number of games you play against certain teams. I don't really look at '12 has anything to do with '14. There's nothing relative at all other than you win series. You have to win four games to win a series, that's the only thing that's common. Q. (No microphone.) COACH SUTTER: Robyn is not skating. When Robyn is ready to skate, he'll skate. It's a knee injury. Obviously he'll make that decision. If he could play on one leg, he would. He showed it to us last year in the playoffs. I've seen him enough in his career, if there was a way to skate, he'd be playing. Q. What have you noticed about Muzzin's progress? COACH SUTTER: Not much difference. I mean, probably only difference we see in playoffs is we use him in penalty kill. Offense is just something that gets talked about the day after the game. If you win the game, then they made a great contribution. Q. How big was his goal? COACH SUTTER: It was right after Drew's goal. Talk about the momentum part of it, there was some momentum there. Q. You get a lot of Tyler/Tanner questions. Jeff gets locked out of that at times. What has he done not only for himself, but those guys? COACH SUTTER: Well, I think Jeff Carter gets overlooked. He was the leading goal‑scorer in our conference last year. I know a lot of the talk in this series has been about a player on our team and a player on their team. Jeff is just as important to our team as both those players that are getting talked about. Those kids get an opportunity to play with a top player in the Western Conference. That pretty much speaks for it. I mean, Jeff, you saw him last night, his minutes aren't specifically with those boys. He played the power play with Kopy and Gabby. He was penalty killing with Mike. He played regular strength with Gabby and Kopy. He was out there with Stolly a lot, so... Q. With a team like Chicago that's given you fits over the last little while, to come back and score five in the third, a confidence standpoint, did they need a victory like that? COACH SUTTER: You don't fight with confidence. Never seen it once. You were probably questioning how they played in Game1. We played a better game in Game1 than we did in Game2. We didn't leave the game not being confident. If every game you lost you lost your confidence, then you guys don't have to cover hockey in April, May and June. Q. Die‑hard fans have said that you've surprised them this season. Are you surprised by your team? COACH SUTTER: No. We believed in our goal. Doesn't change. Obviously, everybody's goal is to win the Stanley Cup. Our goals do not change. You're trying to be a playoff team, being a hundred‑point team, you try to put pressure on teams above you. You try to be ready for playoffs. Lots goes into playoffs' winning and losing. Quite honestly, a lot of it is injury‑schedule related. So when your season's over, you always go back and say, Are we happy with that? Are we not happy with that? Are we happy we're still playing? We're happy we're still playing. We didn't have much support in the San Jose series. It was kind of just waiting to see when we were going to get beat out. We don't play by that rule. If we lose, we got beat, it's not like we beat ourselves. And that's a good way to do it. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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