MEDIA: Drew Doughty, Adrian Kempe, and Jim Hiller | 10.07 LA Kings v Colorado Avalanche

MEDIA: Drew Doughty, Adrian Kempe, and Jim Hiller | 10.07 LA Kings v Colorado Avalanche

Obviously, not the way you guys drew that one up. How did you kind of see it unfold from your perspective? Um, I mean, first was pretty I thought pretty even. Um, didn’t really have much either way and then I mean the penalties just caught up to us. Uh, actually penalty kill was freaking really good today. We weren’t giving them a ton of looks and then we eventually make too many and that’s one of the best PPS in the league. So, uh, yeah, that hurt us. Um, second period wasn’t good enough. Kind of were on our heels. We were turned the puck over too much. They’re getting a lot of speed off turnovers and threeon twos and stuff and that hurt us and I mean good response in the third but too little too late. Is this one of those kind of moments where the opportunity to go back to back is maybe welcomed. You get the chance to go right back at it and try again. Yeah, we got to forget about that right away. Um I’m sure we’ll watch a few things to, you know, see the things we were doing wrong. But we all know what we were doing wrong in that game. We weren’t playing our style of game and the way we’re supposed to play. So, uh we’ll put this one behind us um and focus on tomorrow. So, what did you do right tonight? Anything? Um, I thought we responded well in the third, but like I said, too little too late, but we definitely played well in the third. We started doing the right thing, started drawing some penalties, started getting some opportunities. Um, I did think at times we did defend well. Uh, and I do think the PK was good. So, uh, overall definitely not even close to good enough, but there were definitely some good things. It seems like you guys came off more intensity, kind of had them on their heels of start and then they caught back up. Do you think your guys’ levels dropped a little or did they raise theirs? Um I mean it’s it’s a first game honestly in the first period it feels like everything is happening so fast um like even for myself been playing so long I’m a calm you know poised player and I things were happening so fast it’s just the adrenaline’s going both teams are flying around the first period’s hard to play in for either team so um yeah potentially that happened but uh they outplayed us so there’s nothing else to say really. How are you feeling physically? I felt great tonight. Um it’s moving well. Um, yeah, I felt felt the best I felt in in a year. So, pre-injjury, are you at that level, you think? I’ll I’ll be there. I don’t know that I’m not going to say I played at that level tonight, but I’ll be there. And Daddy struggled to take away positives. They said maybe the third period. What positives could you take out of this game? Uh, yeah. I don’t think you can draw too many uh that you can point to a player or to a part of our game. I mean, penalty kill list, you give that team uh six power plays to hold them to one is actually probably a pretty good job in the end if if you want to look at one part of the game, but clearly you can’t give them six and then and then think you did well. That’s you’re not going to win that way. They only got the one. Do you feel the penalties maybe disrupted the flow of the team a little bit in the secondary connectivity as well? Yeah, that always disrupts you for sure, but uh I didn’t think there was a lot of flow to the game really from either team. um particular to the second period like the first period was it was mucky but it was kind of a pretty well played game and what they did really well what they did better than us is they checked us better than than we than we did and we usually check pretty good and so credit to them. They really played a a a strong checking game. didn’t give us much time and space and we needed somebody to either one get a good forch check going and and just try to create something ugly down there or make a play and we were really not able to do either of those two things. How disappointing is that to hear a team out check you guys? I mean, you guys are a team that Yeah. Well, that’s that’s a pretty good team. like their their team, former Stanley Cup champion not too long ago and uh yeah, I mean it’s just the point they I think the shots were 17 18 or pretty much even at even strength. I didn’t think if we go back and look at the chance wise at even strength it wasn’t much uh either way, but they they did a good job. They outcheed us. They they caught us. They disrupted plays. They didn’t let us forch check. Um, so it’s not like we gave them a lot, but they did a good job not giving us anything. Did you like some of that chippiness in the third period? The guys were still engaged and not maybe checked out. Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I like Milot’s response first of all to the hit uh on uh the hit on Fogle, which I think Malot, you know, we kind of saw. We thought it was a high hit. We thought, you know, and so Malot went in and, you know, we got no problems with that. I thought that was a really important moment for for him and for our team to know that we’re not going to take that. And then yeah, in the end, you know, you you’re fighting hard and you know, probably the score is out of reach at that point. If we get the second one maybe, but you know, you start getting you start getting down three late, it makes it pretty tough. Why was Malak giving the extra two there at the end of your first you get an explanation on that? Uh, he wanted to give me an explanation. So, it’s not on him. It was more on me at that point. And I was disappointed that the original hit to the the original uh wasn’t just called. I think the play would have went away if the original was called in my mind. And so uh yeah, I we didn’t we didn’t discuss exactly what happened after that. Jim, how do you balance not to overreact to game? Yeah. Yeah. Well, listen, that was not a good game for us, but I don’t want to take away from how well Colorado played here tonight either. You know what I mean? So, let’s let’s give them the credit that they’re due and say that we need to play better than we did. Um, but yeah, I mean, we’ll we’ll have to go bounce back tomorrow. That’s just what we do. That’s how the league works. It’s it’s a marathon as we know. Um, and I know we weren’t happy with the way we played, players included. You said in the room that if players could play again, they’d want to do it right now. Is this maybe one of those opportunities where the chance to go back to back is encouraging where you can flush this one and get right back to Well, I guess so. I mean, you know, we had a chance after the first, we regrouped. We had a chance if we wanted to really go, we would have went in the second and we we didn’t really go in the second. So, I guess you can say we came a little bit in the third and so we finished at least with some type of a push. Um, but you get 60 minutes to play the game and play it, you know, between the whistles and we just didn’t get enough done. So, we’ll need some rest first before we play another one, which is a good team in Vegas tomorrow. Dan and CC mostly playing together. What did you think of that pairing tonight? Yeah, I mean, I thought they were fine. We we if if you look at the goals, we came back into Done. We didn’t stop once and and close the middle. Uh, you know, that’s not on either defenseman. Uh the other one was a seeing eye shot a little bit. Molinsky’s goal and then uh you know we got uh neckers on the power play. So there wasn’t you know there wasn’t a player that didn’t you know miss an assignment. There was a couple you know uh as a group where we missed an assignment. We had two or three guys not stopped in front of the net. You know you’re disappointed at that. Um but I thought you know up and down the lineup there’s nobody that really stood out for me in a real positive way or or in a negative way. It seemed like Clark was kind of in the middle of the at the end there. Had some of the bench down four nothing. Do you like him starting it up there or would you kind of rather had a quiet finish to the game? No. You know, uh, for all the the really good things Clarky does, probably we don’t talk enough about is how competitive he is. Um, so Clark is not going to go away. He he he plays hard. He’s in the middle of it. You know, the guys going after him for different reasons, but he’s he’s not going away. He he plays hard. He’s very competitive. Did you have a plan coming in for these two games how you wanted to use all 22? Did tonight’s result does it change at all what you want to do tomorrow? No, I mean we we thought this is our best 20. Let’s play our best 20 and then we were we would react after the game depending on how it went. So, we haven’t had a chance to really talk about that yet. Uh, you know, Turk and Malot didn’t play a lot based on the penalties. Uh, but I thought both of those guys played pretty well really in the end. They had Turk had the great chance in front of the net. Mot gets into a fight, has a couple hits. So, you know, you can’t look at them and say they were the weak link. Yeah. Is that something you just have to wait and assume that it’s going to fix itself, especially early on that? Well, I think I think you know, maybe you guys didn’t ask the question, but again, I’ll say Colorado tracked us hard. Didn’t give us a lot of time and space, and we tried to make way too many passes under that type of duress. Uh, you hear us talk about this a lot. We had to forch check more. We just had to forche more. It was that was all we were going to be able to get tonight. You could see the way they were skating and I think we passed up opportunities to do that and that’s why we looked even more disconnected with the with the disconnect you had the game was a little bit kind of disjointed. How much of that do you attribute to kind of just opening night jitters? Yeah, I mean I don’t know who somebody asked the question this morning about, you know, do you is do you like being at home with these ceremonies and stuff like that? I I’ve been on both sides of it and I guess I didn’t give the right answer was was I remember a couple years ago we were in Pittsburgh in the retired Yogers jersey and an incredible ceremony. It was we were so fortunate to be there. One of the best players ever play the game and it took a long time. But we came out after that I just remember we skated that night. It was one of we were Zach’s shaking his head. You remember that night? He came out flying after that. So tonight we didn’t come out flying and I thought Colorado did. You mentioned Jeffree a lot of getting stronger. Does he feel like a guy who’s maybe he gets it now what he needs to do to make the NHL? He’s really going to be at this level. Yeah, I think so. I mean, you know, we had him late and then you’re late and you’re just trying to find your way a little and then we’re right into the playoffs. So, it’s not really a a chance to to acclim acclimate yourself, but I think he had a good summer to think about how well he played, what he needed to do, get a little stronger, and so I think he’s just a much more confident player, knows he can play in the NHL, knows he can contribute, and sometimes that just makes a pretty big difference. I think Taylor Ward, we talked about him the same way. He had the one game only, but he came in way more confident training camp, preseason, and so I think that’s a little bit what’s going on with Jeff, too. Just we just talked with Drew and he really highlighted the turnovers in the second period is kind of when things went against. Did you kind of see it the same way? What were your takeaways from tonight? Yeah, I mean, yeah, couple turnovers for sure that we could have uh done some better with. Um yeah, overall I think they were just a little sharper than we were out there tonight. I feel like they were more connected all over the ice. Uh from all the way from Dzone to Forch, a little bit more connected and a little bit more on the same page. Uh yeah, compared to what we were or what it felt like at least I haven’t watched the game so it’s obviously hard to tell right after but that’s kind of the feeling I have. Adrian, how do you try and balance not want to overreact to one bad game to start the season but also not want to kind of let yourself off the hook for that either. Yeah, we kind of talked about that in the intermissions. You know, obviously it’s it’s frustrating when you go down early and you feel like you don’t have anything going offensively and you know killing a lot of penalties and all that kind of stuff. So that’s something we tal talked about not getting too frustrated and try to stick with it. But then on the other side of it, you know, going into the third, I think we did a better job in the third period being on the same page, more connected. Uh for check, I think was a little bit better. So that’s something we got to, you know, um bring tomorrow for sure. Uh yeah, regroup, come back, be be better team. The chippiness in the third, is that you guys being frustrated or them trying to impose their will on you guys? Uh I think it was a little both back and forth. There was some some things going on during the game and escalated a little bit in the third. So this, you know, I don’t really know exactly what happened. I wasn’t too involved in that, but um yeah, I mean I think we wanted to play a little bit harder I think than we did as well. And you know, sometimes you you go over the line a little bit, but I think uh yeah, just you know, start of the season, first game, everybody’s excited to play. You uh yeah, you want to play hard, you want to play physical, and yeah, that’s just the way you go sometimes. Just one of those opportunities where the chance to go back to back, play again immediately tomorrow is maybe a good thing for you guys to flush this one and get right back at it. Yeah, I think so. I think everybody if we could play that game again, I think we want to do it right now. So, I think uh yeah, tomorrow is going to be a great opportunity for us to show u show up again and you know, play a better game and you know, play another really good team, one of the best teams in the league. So, I mean uh another good test for us and I think it’s going to be uh it’s going to be tough month. We have a lot of good games coming up. So, I think it’s going to be a great test for for this team early on, but I think it’s really good for us. I think we’re all excited for us. We got to embrace it and yeah, we got to play better than we did tonight. That late power play goal obviously doesn’t mean much for tonight, but is that something you guys can kind of try and build on moving into tomorrow night and kind of at least get something feel a little bit better about the game off that? Yeah, I think uh first couple power plays we didn’t really have it. Pass it around a little bit too much. Uh then obviously we get a five on three and you know uh started shooting the puck a little bit more but then after that on the five on four I think we had some really good chances too and that’s kind of what you get momentum from. So uh yeah I think that was uh at least one good thing that we can take with us tomorrow is we scored well on power play and you know special teams are important. I think PK did a job tonight as

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