Here’s Darryl Sutter (courtesy L.A. Kings Insider) talking about -- or, not talking about -- his club’s current battle with illness, and how the Kings deal with it differently than other NHL teams.
On the team battling illness:
I don’t like talking about it…It’s sort of what the popular thing around the league now for guys to use as an excuse, and we don’t.
[Reporter: I know because a couple of guys were under the weather on the trip. Is that something that kind of carried over from there, or is it a new thing?]
No, we’ve had three days off…You’ve just got to get through it. It’s what you do.
The St. Louis Blues, Minnesota Wild and Anaheim Ducks have had well-documented illness issues this season. The St. Louis situation was exacerbated when a report claimed the Center for Disease Control visited the Scottrade Center for a potential bacterial mumps breakout, which later proved to be false (the CDC was never on hand.)
At the risk of reading too much into Sutter’s remarks, it is worth pointing out L.A. plays Anaheim tonight and that, yesterday, the Ducks’ Twitter account posted this:UPDATE: Perry and Beauchemin out w/ a viral gland infection. Both are undergoing testing and results are pending.
— Anaheim Ducks (@AnaheimDucks) November 11, 2014Perry is currently on IR with the illness and, last week, required intravenous fluids from a local hospital. Neither he nor Beauchemin will be in the lineup for tonight’s game.