LA Kings' Mike Richards relishing NHL playoff redemption - The Province

Like most hockey players in playoff mode, Mike Richards won’t admit to much.

Certainly not that his first postseason with the Los Angeles Kings is a chance to redeem a season that’s been deeply disappointing from an offensive standpoint.

But the Kings centre did acknowledge on Thursday that the playoffs are not only big fun, they also start with a clean slate for everyone involved.

â€Å"You start looking at the stats sheet, maybe, and get frustrated,” said Richards, 27, as the Kings and Canucks prepared for Game 2 on Friday.

â€Å"It’s a fresh start in playoffs. Everybody starts at zero. I never lost confidence in myself. Even though I wasn’t getting the points, the bounces, you knew if you stuck with it, it was going to come.

â€Å"You stick with the game plan. It’s not cheating offensively. It’s playing good defence. It was nice to have a game like last night, but it’s time to move on and look ahead to Game 2.”

Richards was as dominating and feisty in Game 1 as he ever was in his days in Philly, playing a tooth-and-nail matchup with Canucks’ Ryan Kesler and figuring in three of the four Kings’ goals in a 4-2 victory.

â€Å"He’s been known throughout his career to play big in big games and he showed that last night,” said Kings captain Dustin Brown.

â€Å"Probably him and Kesler will be matched up, and playing against Mike, even when we played against each other back in junior, he’s not a fun guy to play against.

â€Å"He has a little bit of that rat mentality, but he also has the skill and the killer instinct to go with it.”

But as virtuoso a performance as Richards put in for Game 1, many didn’t know what to expect after a regular season that was far below par offensively.

Richards finished the season with 44 points, his lowest total in five seasons. After missing eight games with a concussion in December, Richards scored goals in consecutive games, but then scored just once in his next 35 games.

That’s not what we saw from Richards, who was one of the Canadian Olympic team’s best players in the 2010 tournament. Asked to analyze the offensive slump, Richards claimed he hadn’t had time to think about it.

Certainly, it had something to do with switching teams and conferences last summer, when the Flyers made a seismic change in their dressing room by trading both Richards and Jeff Carter along with their long-term contracts.

It also may be that the concussion that cost him eight games in December had a longer-term effect on his play.

But there’s no question that the coaching change — from Terry Murray to Darryl Sutter — just before Christmas benefited Richards. He’s Sutter’s kind of player — he’s fiery, he works hard, he’s a demon defensively — and the up-tempo, puck-possession style that the new coach has installed suits Richards’ game.

Asked if he wondered when he took over why Richards had so few points, Sutter said, â€Å"nope.”

â€Å"He’s a pretty good player, he’s an elite player,” Sutter continued. â€Å"You saw him [here] in the Olympics.”

There may be some questions about Richards’ regular season, but if he can keep himself in playoff mode it gives an immense boost to the Kings’ chances in this series.

NOTES — Sutter confirmed that Kyle Clifford, who was knocked out of Game 1 on a hit by Bryon Bitz, won’t play in Game 2. Thursday, Bitz was suspended two games for the hit.

jjamieson@theprovince.com

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