Returning to Edmonton as a player, not observer, Doughty praises team growth and credits Quick - JAD looks to maintain rhythm after Calgary homecoming

Last updated Nov 19, 2022 Edit Source

• News post

• Jon Rosen

Forum Club. A much chillier evening in Edmonton today. Tiny white flurries are falling from the sky, but nothing that should provide anything more than the most threadbare ground cover. Cold. Wind. Meanwhile, Los Angeles strikes oil after becoming overcome by Flames as the Pacific Division trip continues in the league’s northernmost outpost, with puck drop scheduled for 8:20 p.m. (TNT / Bally Sports West / LA Kings Audio Network).

• Drew Doughty
• Jaret Anderson-Dolan
• Kevin Fiala

• Todd McLellan

# Todd McLellan

I know they always qualify it, but I don’t think there’s a lot of coaches, staffs, even players that even pay attention to the artificial deadlines that exist in the NHL. I’ve always thought that evaluating young players at that time of the year can be a little misleading. It’s game 10-through-25 that you really get the true evaluation, because it gets a little heavier, harder, tighter checking, goalies tend to have found their games.

No one expected us to get to that point last year. Surprised a lot of teams. That’s not happening this year. Teams are fully prepared. We’re not getting backup goaltenders, we’re getting starters, and teams don’t waste any minutes when they play against us now, and that’s exactly what we hoped for as a team. That’s what we wanted to be playing – those type of games night after night, and that playoff series helped us earn the right to do that, and now we’ve got to live up to those expectations and responsibilities. It was a pretty close series. There were a few games that didn’t go our way. I’m sure they would say the same thing. But when you play seven games, it’s not because it was lopsided one way or another. There were moments where they had some other gamebreakers take over, and willed them to a win, and at the end of the day, that’s probably the difference.

Over the past few years we’ve gone from a one-line to a two-line and now maybe a three-line team that scores, and that’s not to diminish what Lizotte’s line does on a nightly basis. They work really hard and create, so that’s what Kevin’s done for us.

a sign to a coach or to your teammates that ‘boy, we might not be here,’ because if you don’t know what you’re doing three or four seconds in, you wonder sometimes. But our group’s been pretty good with that. It’s not always mental. Sometimes you make physical mistakes. We’ve got some things that we’ve got to fix and we talked about. We’re hoping to get some of those things done tonight, but whenever we’ve addressed the team and tried to repair some things, they usually have a pretty good focus on that area of the game, so we expect it to happen again.

I think sometimes when guys come in they’re overwhelmed with the speed or the pace. I didn’t see that in [Jaret Anderson-Dolan]’s case because he worked so hard and he was ready for it. Also, tough circumstances when the team isn’t really connecting as we had been coming into that game. You get caught in the mess, if you will, but he did an admirable job.

They did an outstanding job not only against the Oilers, but keep in mind we were playing short from game four [of the season]. That put us in a situation of 78 games without some of our top defensemen, and it allowed Sean Durzi to evolve, it allowed Jordan Spence to arrive, Jacob Moverare. These types of players came in and pinch hit, and when they did that they were outstanding. It gave us as an organization an opportunity to evaluate our depth, to know what we have. I don’t want to say it was a blessing in disguise because nobody wants to play without Doughty, Edler, Walker – go on and on. But when they were out, they did a really good job.

Yeah, [Drew Doughty] would’ve been. There’s no doubt that we missed him last year. He meant so much to our team, and his surgery, he worked really hard, and his body was healing. Would he have played in that next round? It’s hypothetical, we don’t know. But he would’ve tried everything he possibly could to get there, but we don’t have to worry about it now.

# Drew Doughty

I was very impressed with how we played very impressed and with how Quickie played. Yeah, it was a close series, but Quickie made it a close series, I thought. We did play well and we had a chance to win the series, there’s no doubt about it. But, very proud of the guys – we had a lot of guys who’ve never played a playoff game. We had some big players out of the lineup, and I thought the guys stepped up really well. So, it was a great stepping stone for our team and we need to carry over into the season.

Our players, most of whom played in that playoff series, will have a keen understanding if the shoe was on the other foot in terms of how you’d want to react the next time you came up here. What I go into is the fact that this team is in front of us in the standings, that we have a great opportunity to improve our play at home, and that starts against a very game Los Angeles Kings team tonight.

# Jaret Anderson-Dolan

Something I’ll remember for a long time, for sure. Hopefully it’s not the last time. Hopefully I have a bunch more of those because that was a blast having family and friends there, but I would have liked to get a win.

I think for not playing in a while, the first little bit was just getting the rhythm back. A couple plays I could have been better on for sure, but for the most part, solid and looking to build on that, for sure.