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This article was published 11/06/2012 (5178 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — One can only imagine the hell a player would catch if he were to supply the other side with some bulletin board material in this Stanley Cup Final.

Kings coach Darryl Sutter and Devils boss Pete DeBoer are very plain-speaking men and have little tolerance for foolishness. No, there won’t be any guaranteed win quotes in this series. That being said the access the NHL has provided to the players and the coaches in the final has been excellent. Here’s a sampling of what they were saying on Sunday afternoon in preparation for Game 6.

‘I don’t know about ‘lost their composure.’ You could see some frustration. Understandable. That’s the spot we want to put them in. We want to keep that pressure on them.’

‘Sure, that’s motivation. When your bus has to pull by the 10 limos parked on the road for the after party, that’s definitely a motivation.’

‘We won last time (Taylor Stevens) was there. I’ll buy her a ticket if we can do that again.’

— Pete DeBoer

‘Well, there is adversity in every game at some point always. I don’t think not having long series has any bearing on anything. The farther you go, the better the teams are that you play. You know what, that’s why they’re in it. They’re low-scoring games. You look at it, four of the games were 2-1 hockey, other than an empty-net goal the last few seconds. If there’s any challenge with us, the only challenge with our team is that we’re not scoring a lot of goals. So that’s something that we faced, this group, most of the year, right? Every little mistake is magnified.’

‘I think, quite honestly, the only pressure the players should feel is just to maximize how they can play, their own skill set. I don’t think we feel any pressure. Not at all. You know, New Jersey is playing pretty well, right? But let’s not forget New Jersey is the home team. New Jersey is the team that had the hundred some points. You know what, we expected a long, hard series out of the New Jersey Devils, and that’s what we’re getting.’

— Darryl Sutter

‘We’re still in obviously a really good spot. If somebody would have told us that we were going to go up 3-2 going home to have the chance to close it out, I think everybody would sign that paper. It’s just a matter of going out there and getting it done.’

— Anze Kopitar, Kings

‘I think the only pressure you have is the pressure that’s in the dressing room, looking at the guy beside you, see how hard he’s worked. It’s something you want to do for him, not for everybody else that’s trying to put the pressure on you. We put a lot of pressure on each other as players. We expect the best of each other. I’d rather have the guy beside me expect the best than going out there thinking I’m going to be average. There’s a lot of pressure we put on ourselves, but we don’t get a lot of pressure from outside.’

— Mike Richards, Kings

“Quite honestly, we never really focused on being down 3-0. Like I said, we’ve had all types of adversity this whole year. We just really wanted to stick to it and just hope that the tide would turn for us, not get down upon ourselves, not point fingers, put blame on anybody being down 3-0. Even in some of those games, we felt we could have won one of those, Game 1 or Game 2. I bet you if you asked them, they probably felt like they could have won the one in our barn last game because they had some great chances. I think it’s important from our standpoint not to overanalyze the situation. We’ve got to keep winning games. There’s two games left and we’ve got to win them both. That’s our focus, not how we go out there or anything that’s happened in the past.”

— Bryce Salvador, Devils

‘Well, I think hockey’s changed in the new era. I think the way the game is called by the referees, let the guys skate, no red-line, really makes it anybody’s ball game.

When the teams go down in the series, in games, there’s time. There’s always time, regardless if you’re down 1-0, 2-0. We’ve done it to ourselves. Makes it interesting. I think you have to play 60 minutes of hockey now. You can’t just coast like you used to.’

— Martin Brodeur, Devils

gary.lawless@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @garylawless