Stay out of the box

One area in which the Kings have shown definite improvement is in staying out of the penalty box. Penalties, especially bad penalties in the offensive zone, plagued the Kings in the first few games, but the last two have been marked by improvement. In their first five games, the Kings allowed eight, four, seven, six and seven power plays. They allowed Detroit only two on Sunday and Minnesota only three on Tuesday, and the Kings killed all five.

``It is a point of emphasis,'' Marc Crawford said of staying out of the penalty box. ``We don't want to tax our penalty killers. We're only using four or five guys to kill penalties up front, so you want to limit how much you're taxing them, especially Kopitar and Brown, who play a lot of power-play minutes as well. I think it goes the same for Rob Blake and Brad Stuart, who do both. (Visnovsky) has been killing a little bit more regularly for us this year.

``So the more that you can keep your key people fresh, I think the power-play minutes are a lot more enjoyable for a team than the penalty-kill minutes. That just stands to reason. That's common sense. You're the one shooting, you're the one with the puck, you're the one that's creative, and those are much more positive energies than defending and blocking shots and doing some ugly things that are necessary to win as well.''