Kukla's Korner Hockey

Kukla's Korner Hockey

The Angry LA Kings Plus A Look At Darryl Sutter

01/01/2015 at 7:23pm EST

from Jon Rosen of LA Kings Insider,

Jake Muzzin shared an interesting viewpoint after the shootout loss in Edmonton two nights ago.

“We’ve got to come out hungrier from the get-go and desperate from the get-go. I think if we do that, we give ourselves a good chance at a hockey game,” he said. “We’ve got to get angry and get mad and bear down and get some points here.”

It was a passionate expression shared shortly after a disappointing loss, so the emotion is understandable. Of course, this team’s “park-and-ride” approach stipulates that this team lets go of wins and losses around the time it leaves the arena, so I was wondering if the team’s recent stretch – the Kings are 7-7-4 in their last 18 games – has, in fact, made the team want to work a little bit of anger into its game. I consulted with alternate captain Matt Greene.

Matt Greene, on whether the team needs to play angrier:

During the course of the game, I think a lot of guys do.

continued

Paul Brownfield of LA Magazine with an excellent look at Darryl Sutter

The drills all involved end-zone breakouts, offensive-zone entries, and crisp cross-ice feeds: the ingrained choreography of attack. Flanked near the glass, right winger Marian Gaborik whizzed by on a 3-on-2 entry with his linemates Dustin Brown and Anze Kopitar, his stride leaving fumes. Hockey is a violent contact sport that resembles a freeway speeding north and south. In today’s National Hockey League, players don’t so much enter the game as merge onto it, hopping off the bench for shifts that aren’t supposed to last even a minute. On teams that are in sync, the puck is like a hand grenade after the pin’s been pulled. Get it, get rid of it. Don’t think, know the system.

Darryl Sutter’s system emphasizes pace—move the puck when you have it, be “quick to close” on the opponent when you don’t. The head coach of L.A.’s championship hockey team, the Kings, also applies the Darwinian principle he learned five decades ago as one of seven boys growing up on a hardscrabble farm in rural western Canada: The strong will survive; the weak won’t.

continued

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Paul Kukla founded Kukla’s Korner in 2005 and the site has since become the must-read site on the ‘net for all the latest happenings around the NHL.

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