Kings go off-ice in Washington, McLellan and Doughty detail benefits of a different type of practice - LA Kings Insider
# Kings go off-ice in Washington, McLellan and Doughty detail benefits of a different type of practice - LA Kings Insider
# Contributors
# Summary
Two days remaining on a road trip that has seen the Kings go 3-1-0 to this point. It’s been wild at times, it’s been strange at times and it certainly hasn’t been perfect. But, through it all, three wins from four games is three wins from four games and the Kings have a chance to make it four from five tomorrow, in a building that created a memorable victory a season ago.
# Players
# Staff
# Notes and Quotes
# Drew Doughty
We can make this a great road trip, I think someone said good, but it’s a great road trip if we win four out of five. That’s a really good road trip. We’re not looking ahead to going home right now, we’ve got a big game against Washington and we didn’t perform well in the last game. We’re going to come out hot, that’s the plan anyway, and have a really good game.
We’re just not making good decisions, they’re very fixable things, very fixable. We looked at them today, it’s actually kind of embarrassing how many things we’re messing up defensively. That’s not our M.O., that’s not how LA Kings hockey is played. We’re a good defensive team and yes, we want to improve on the offense that we have, but we need to get back to playing good defense.
When you’re playing a lot of games like this, we don’t have a lot of time off, so I think it’s important to get rest on practice days sometimes. Yes, practice is important too, to sharpen up, but we’ll be able to get pregame states in and I think it was a good day. We got to have some fun, still got a sweat in like we would have on the ice, it was just more fun.
# Todd McLellan
It is [different] the way the schedule rolled out, the CBA mandates a certain amount of days off and we respect that for sure. The players need rest and we haven’t had a lot of practice time, so some would think ‘well why did you not skate today’. We just thought our energy would be a lot better by doing what we did. Using up the four days off in the short month of October, we had to pick some of these days on the road trip to give them days off and therefore it’s been a different type of trip. But, it has a chance to be a real successful trip if we play the way we can get the results we need.
Well, we had two off-ice training sessions. We had one in the video room that was really important, where we addressed some of our shortcomings, things that we need to prepare and improve on. Then, we went outside, we got 15 or 20 minutes of a workout in, it’s a beautiful day here in Washington, there was a park nearby. I think sometimes that can really energize a group, especially at the back end of a trip. First trip of the year has been a long one and everything is about being ready to play tomorrow and being fresh. I think the guys enjoyed it, appreciated it and now the proof will be in the pudding to see if we have the energy we need in game five tomorrow.
There are so many things [we focus on] and keep in mind. I think when you think about a meeting, you’re just thinking negative and it isn’t that way. We did a lot of things well in that first period yesterday as far as the forecheck goes and the tenacity on the forecheck, the ability to keep plays alive. It changed when we went down three, we lost a little bit of the belief and we can fix that. There are commonalities on both sides, special teams, power play, penalty kill faceoffs, 4-on-4 play, overtime, stuff we’ve dug into but not enough. That’ll happen when we get home.