Murray: both goalies will play
Jason LaBarbera beat Edmonton on Wednesday and Erik Ersberg beat Chicago on Saturday. Tomorrow night against Toronto, the Kings will go back to LaBarbera, who has a 2.87 goals-against average and a .890 save percentage this season, compared to Ersberg's 2.29 and .900. After practice today, I asked Terry Murray how he planned to handle the goaltending situation in the near future...
MURRAY: ``We'll play LaBarbera tomorrow. We've got four games in six days. We've said this all along, that it's important to have two goalies who are capable of playing and do keep playing. I really like Barbs' game when he played in Edmonton. He had a big win for us there and it was important to bounce back and do the right stuff as a team and get the win on the road under our belt. He's ready to play and he's hungry and he wants to get back in there, so he will get the game tomorrow. I know Toronto has some very big forwards who go to the net real hard, and Barbs is a big man who can match up to that battle that's going to be there in front of the net.''
To follow up, I asked Murray if, in general, he felt comfortable rotating goalies, or whether he would prefer to pick one goalie and stick with him...
MURRAY: ``If I had a number one guy that could play 82 games, I would do that. But you take a look around, and there's only three or four of those guys in the league. In our situation, I'm going to keep going with two goaltenders. I have confidence in both guys. I think after 20 games now, the first 10 belonging to Barbs and the next 10 basically belonging to Ersberg, I got a feel and read as to what their games are about. That was important for me to be able to see that, and to get to know who they are. From here on out, I can't make a statement today as to how I'm going to deal with it, but I know that this week, with four (games) in six days, both goalies are going to play.''
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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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Jill Painter joined the Daily News in 2000 and during the last eight years she's covered the Dodgers, Cal State Northridge, UCLA, Kings, golf and everything in between. Even though she's from Colorado, she still freezes in the Staples Center press box but always manages to thaw her fingers in time to make deadline. E-mail Jill at jill.painter@dailynews
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For once i don't care if Beachball #2 starts.
Toronto is a _hitty team with a poor defense.
I anticipate the kings scoring 7 or 8 goals tomorrow.
Sully will get a hat trick as well.
Watch.
care to place a wager on that?
Prepare for Barbs' lone softy. Like clockwork.
Oh well we lose, Barbs needs help...wake up TM....
do you really think you will do well with Barbs????
Cmon guys...Ersberg's not playing every game. We have a bunch of back to back games and Barbs will be starting some of these and I hope he does well. He played well in his last game. Our defense doesn't give up many quality scoring chances. I actually think it's becoming less important as to who's in goal because of this.
I think Ersberg is establishing himself as the #1 right now, but that doesn't mean he should be playing 82 games.
great points nykingfan! I agree 100%
Not to add undue pressure on these young whippersnappers, but a win tonight could vault the Kings into the #8 spot in the conference. I don't think we've been anywhere near sniffing distance of a playoff spot this 'deep' into the season since 2 coaches ago.
That said, Kings need to make a statement tonight against a weaker team that's lost 4 of its last 5 regardless of who's in net for us.
Ersberg should be the #1 but when you have 4 games in 1 week and a back to back, why not get Labarbera in the game against the so called weaker team of the two? Ersberg does seem to need some rest. I love how he gave up two goals against Chicago pretty early and nothing after that. That's always my fear with Labarbera in net, we fall behind 2-1 or 3-1 and the guy gives up a soft goal that just puts it out of reach and I never think that way with Ersberg in net.