A Not-So-Practice Report – Kings off today in Vancouver, McLellan talks process behind scheduling

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• News post

• Zach Dooley

When speaking before the game in Calgary, Todd McLellan detailed a bit of insight into how the staff planned to script this trip from a scheduling perspective. He indicated that he would likely give the team a day off somewhere on the trip and indicated that he would make that decision independent of emotion, independent of game results and everything that comes along with them. The Kings have had one of the league’s most aggressive schedules in the early goings – THE most aggressive schedule by games played – and will also finish the week on Saturday with the most road games played of any team in the NHL. We’re a month into the season and 29 percent of the away slate will be wiped out by the time I’m watching Elton John perform at Dodger Stadium on Sunday night.

• Viktor Arvidsson

• Todd McLellan
• Jim Hiller

# Todd McLellan

We’ll do that fairly often, we have to, because of the business of the game, the CBA, we have to make a schedule well in advance. That’s not just the Kings, that’s everybody, but we’re also prepared to be flexible as the year goes on, the week goes on. There’s a real good chance we’ll find a day for our team to rest on this road trip and right now, we’re being scheduled for practice, but we’ll find a day, regardless of the results. There’s a need for rest, that’s really important.

One of the things that I’ve learned is take the emotion out of decisions like that, make them and then live with it. So obviously, in Chicago if we had lost 10-1, we’d want to bring them to the rink and let’s fix this, but we make those decisions in advance.

It’s interesting because we’re not even at Thanksgiving yet and I believe I’ve said this before, Jimmy Hiller comes from the East and he said it feels like we’re at the 40-game mark already. I think that’s a good sign for us, because that means we’re in it. We’re emotionally involved in a race early, we’re stressed when we’re losing, we’re trying to find ways to get better when we’re winning and I’m not just talking about the coaching staff I’m talking about the players. This road trip, we’re staying relatively close to home if you will, just one time-zone change really and I think that will help us a little bit, whereas the last two were all over the map.