Sutter Knows Kings’ Demeanor Won’t Change

Los Angeles Kings coach Daryl Sutter believes his team played better in their Game 4 loss to the New Jersey Devils than they did in their Game 2 overtime victory.

This doesn’t worry him, however, because the Kings’ bench boss believes his team is stoic. “I haven’t seen a big change in our team emotionally for almost two months now,” he said, “I think we’ve been able to handle different situations. I think they’ve learned, because of the breaks we had before Series 2 and before Series 3, the breaks they had, they had to learn to get their space, get back to being focused and reloaded.”

He said that he mostly leaves the job of keeping the team at room temperature to the players themselves. “They’ve done a good job of that. You leave it to your veterans, reinforce it with the kids.”

Sutter noted that the travel situation (the teams could potentially fly from New Jersey to California three times in the span of six days) is unique, but there are ways to stay ahead of the curve. “The nutrition and the hydration and those things are really important to the players. I think their routine of that is just as important as the time change. What you have on the plane, everybody travels so nice now, it’s pretty good. You’re checking on the pilots most of the time to see how fast they’re going.”

He sees no problem, however, with playing another toss-up game, similar to Games 1 & 2, to bring home the Stanley Cup to Los Angeles for the first time. “I think our players have been right on top of it. You can see how serious both teams are.”