Kings Locker Room: Danault on Losing a Lead & McLellan on Leadership

It's not often a team is disappointed after extending their win streak to four games. But, after blowing a four goal lead against the Arizona Coyotes, the Los Angeles Kings were less than enthused Saturday night. 

They let their foot off the gas and Arizona made them pay. The Kings were able to escape an embarrassing defeat by securing the win in a shootout, but have work to do before their next game.

Hear from Phil Danault and Todd McLellan post game.

Danault on keeping up the intensity after going up early:

I think it's obviously a big trap when you take the lead that much, in the first period too. On the back-to-back as well, we let down a little bit and we got caught. Big character win we did come back with a big shootout win. Quickie (Jonathan Quick) stood up in the shootout. So, it was a big win for us. 

On what the team focused on after it was tied 5-5:

It's going to happen, for the rest of the season too. Maybe not a 5-1 lead, but in playoffs too it happens. So, I don't know, 5-5 we just got back to our game. Just the little details, play on our toes instead of backing up and using the excuse that we played yesterday, we didn't want that. Big two points.

On Vilardi moving onto his line:

He's good with the puck, he holds onto the puck, strong on his stick, good in battles. But yeah, he was good in the third. 

On Moore since his return:

It's going to happen, it's a long season. Mooresey was out for two months, so, it's sometimes to comeback in game. Plus, everyone's pushing for playoffs, so the pace is really fast. It's never easy to come back after injury whoever you are it's going to be hard. But, he's going to get there, I'm not worried about him at all. And, as a line too we've got to get back there. 

McLellan on if it's difficult to not take your foot off the gas when up big early:

Well, apparently, for the LA Kings it's a problem. Because we were standing here five days ago when we played here five days ago and I told you I wasn't real happy with some things. Those were the things, we just saw it again. So, to me, it just goes to show we have a lot of work to do. The championship caliber teams don't do that. Pretty simple. And, we can talk about structure and players and depth with forwards and the ability to score on the power play and all that type of stuff. But one of the big factors in winning, when it all comes down to it, is being able to play with a lead. And our team has to improve immensely in that area. 

On how to fixing that issue:

We talk about it, you can't practice it, the only opportunity you get is in games. And, we talked about the Bufallo finish the other day. In that situation we're taking penalties with a lead, we're loose. This lead tonight happened fast, it happened bang-bang-bang one after another. And then from that point on we got extremely casual. I'm not sure how we replicate that in practice, it has to come from within the locker room. And it didn't tonight. 

On if the team plays different in front of Copley versus Quick:

No, I don't think so, I don't believe that we do. There's no intent to playing differently, we went out and got him a 5-1 lead and if we were every motivated and wanted to shut it down, it should have been tonight. In tonight's case, in fact I think Quickie perhaps stole us a win in the second period. We were out-chanced, I don't know what it was, 9-1 or 9-2. 

On who he is looking to as leaders in a game like tonight:

Yeah, we keep going to Kopi and Drew, Kopi and Drew, and Quickie. Because they've been here for a long time and won championships. Rightfully so, there's another layer and another level in there that has to step up. It used to be Kopi, Drew, Quickie and Brownie. Well, Brownie isn't here anymore, so somebody else step up. And get it done. I heard a lot of guys saying the right things, I didn't see a lot of guys doing the right things.