|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
NHL WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: KINGS v BLACKHAWKSMay 29, 2014Darryl SutterLOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Practice Day Q. (No microphone.) COACH SUTTER: Playoffs. Close games. Sometimes they go to overtime. Sometimes you got to play a long time to win. Doesn't drive you crazy. Q.  Slow start yesterday. How are you going to avoid that for tomorrow? COACH SUTTER: Well, slow starts with a penalty in the first minute, 30 seconds in, tripping penalty. I don't know if you call it a slow start, but puts you down a man for a shift in the game. Q. As a coach, do you have an appreciation for what a show that was last night or do you hate the fact it was a lot of trading chances? COACH SUTTER: Well, you're wanting to not necessarily trade chances, but to try to score you have to put the puck to the goalie. That's what we did. That's what they did. It just took a little longer than it normally does. Not many overtimes go that long. For the teams to be able to sustain the pace that they did, I think it was 13 minutes before the official timeout was. So, you know, it was the pace, using everybody on the bench, telling them to keep their pace up. It was fast. It was a fast overtime. Q. When they put together that line with Saad and Kane and Shaw, I know you don't match lines, but does that force you to adjust anything? COACH SUTTER: Actually, we do match lines. We adjust, otherwise we couldn't keep up with Saad. Q. Are you pretty confident that you do have a sufficient answer to that line? COACH SUTTER: I think the guys that played against them last night were not on top of their game. That's the answer. Q. How impressed are you with the play of Drew Doughty, what he's giving this team, not only last night, but throughout? COACH SUTTER: I think we're used to it with Drew. I think it gets asked a lot. I think he's looked on‑‑ I don't have to say this. It's just like hitting the button again. It's the same answer all the time, isn't it? You know what, he's one of the best two‑way defensemen in the league. He can play against everybody's best players. He can play in all situations. He can play big minutes. When you go into long overtimes, usually those guys are going to play a lot. He did last night. You know what, those guys that are great players, they have that ability to recover in a hurry. That's why they are that great type of player. They don't need a minute and a half on the bench. They need 20, 30 seconds and away they go again. Q. How closely are you watching the Eastern Conference Finals? Is there a part of you that feels like this is the Stanley Cup championship here given the quality of the Chicago team? COACH SUTTER: No, I don't look at it like that at all. I don't get too far ahead of the fact that we're playing the defending champion. That in itself is a challenge. Maybe we've played as well as we can. The other series is obviously a great series. It's good for me being a Canadian, being a hockey fan, seeing two of the original six teams. That's what's really cool for me. Q. When you were on your six‑game winning streak there, could you feel momentum? COACH SUTTER: I haven't seen that in terms of the playoffs at all. I've seen momentums during games. If you look at it in that light, I don't look at it as a six‑game winning streak that we had, you got to win four. Season is over when the series is over. Then you reset again. We know. We've lost three in a row. We lost two in a row, all that. That's what happens in playoffs. It's not so much the now, but it's always about your next game, how you can be better. I'm sure that we're going to have to play better than we did last night. I said that the other night. Some of you guys looked at me glazed over. But it's true. If you're not finding ways to get better or think you can get better, then you're kind of staying where you are. At the end of the day, you want to be able to max it out. If you max it out and you're fortunate enough to win, you move on. If you max out and you don't, you say, Hey, we did our best. Q. Do you get a sense that your team is anxious to get back because it was a terrific game in itself? COACH SUTTER: Yeah, we had a late night. Today is about recovery. It's not anxious. It's not easy to play games like that. It's not easy to play every other day with the travel. Q. Can you compare Drew to anybody else you ever had in your career coaching? COACH SUTTER: I've been part of a lot of good defensemen playing and coaching. There are guys that won Norrises, guys who were captain, guys that won championships. There's several of them. I think that's documented. Chelios, Suter, Wilson. I can go on. There's lots of them. Q. This will be your 20th playoff game in this run. Are you pleased that the energy seems to be at the level it's at? COACH SUTTER: You have to try to maintain your energy. You have to be able to find it in different ways during a game from different guys, from the depth of your bench. It's not just, Let's have energy. If we did that in this room, you know, that's not the way it works. It's mental. The playoffs, the farther you go, it's a mental battle. You look at the teams that are still playing, we're seven weeks past teams that haven't done nothing, that played their last game. That's where your experience and your leadership and your being able to play through injury, being able to just kind of set that stuff aside to try and give a quality performance. Q. Is it a chess game in the sense of trying to stay in the now, but also thinking a move ahead? COACH SUTTER: I think on the bench you're like that. But till you set your lineup, you're not changing a whole lot of the structure of your game. You're trying to get guys to maybe do something a little different. I don't think as a team you are. I think what you do on the bench, you're always setting up for the next shift, or on the fly what you have to do, that sort of thing. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|