O'Sullivan happy about change
Here's what Patrick O'Sullivan said today regarding his reunion with Dustin Brown and Anze Kopitar on the Kings' top line...
Question: Happy to be back with those guys?
O'SULLIVAN: ``Yeah. I think everyone knows what we did last year and all that stuff. So we're familiar with each other, and hopefully we'll get a chance to put some good games together and try to create more offense for our team. We'd like to score more goals. We've been playing really well defensively, so if we get a few more goals we'll be giving ourselves a better chance. At the end of the day, putting us three together was probably the goal. I think we can all score more than we have been.''
Question: Do you guys have a good understanding, from the coaching staff, of what you need to do in order to stay together a while?
O'SULLIVAN: ``Well, obviously if something is working, it's going to stay. At the same time, you need to play together to get the most out of it. Obviously I'm familiar with them, but I haven't played with them (this season) except for one game. The more we're together, the better we're going to get. We're so familiar with how everyone plays. We each play a little different style that complements each other.''
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J.P. Hoornstra writes about NHL and IHL hockey for the Los Angeles Newspaper Group. He welcomes any and all dialogue on the finer points of hockey.
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He summed it up, "if something is working it's going to stay". How long does TM give them if it doesn't work? What's reasonable? The Kings definitely need more offense but they have been playing well as of late and have been in games. It's not like they've been horrible, just not quite productive enough goals-wise..
Excellent attitude Sully. (I love this kid).
I hope you score 4 goals on Thursday, otherwise this genius who demoted you might get impatient and do the same thing.
Good luck on Thursday and get a hat trick or else.
I think this time we will see this line get a legit chance at success.
I hated Calder on the first line, though for a couple of games I thought the Sully-Boyle-Harrold line played well, and I worry about Boyle suffering now that he has to play with Zeiler and Ivanans (but who knows, maybe their aggressiveness will force some more out of him).
Anyways, I was wondering why TM seemed so resistant to our star first line, then the thought occurred to me that perhaps TM was worried that keeping them together at first might make it tougher for them to learn and embrace his new system. It's understandable that a couch wants all of his players to buy into the same style, so even though he probably knew Sully-Kopi-Brown would play well together, they might fall in to wanting to play the same system that worked for them last year. While they played great together, I can buy that TM wanted them to each learn his new system and adjust to it individually before letting them go back to what they did so well last season. We all know that the chemistry between these plays is one of the only "sure" things we knew going in to this season. Perhaps TM knew it too and wanted to focus on other things for the players.
Who knows if any of this is even close to accurate or credible, but it was the firs and only logical reason that came to me as to why he would stifle our offense by keeping them apart. I never really bought the 'spreading the scoring around', especially when we weren't scoring. That also sounded like a cop out to me. This would be more reasonable.
I was excited to see Ovie come to town to begin with, but now I'm even more excited to see tomorrow's game!
GO KINGS GO
All that's left know is to give the line a name b/c they're all going to be Kings together for at least 3 years.
My Nominations:
- The Three Amigos
- Crash BrownieKop
- Royal Rumble Line
- God-please-let-them-start-scoring-Line (not so much a name but rather a hope)
- Two Guys & a Brownie
Go get 'em Sully
prediction: 4th line plays under 6 minutes.
I agree with JDM, I worry about what happens to Boyle when he gets stuck with of Zeiler and Ivanans. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Boyle belongs on a line where he can center players who will put the puck in the net, not just bang people around. He is a higher level player.