Murray gets technical
The second game of the home-and-home Kings vs. Dallas series will get underway in a little more than an hour. Yesterday, Terry Murray gave a bit of a breakdown of Tuesday's game. By all accounts, the Kings played a strong final 30 minutes, and Murray talked about the Stars' strengths, what makes them difficult to play against and how the Kings turned things around on Tuesday...
MURRAY: ``They are real good at puck possession through the neutral zone, through the middle of the ice. Their defensemen are all involved, they handle the puck, they have that mentality that they want to bring it back to get it organized, and then they move off the puck very well. They did catch us several times with that look. We had a team meeting (Wednesday) morning to review some of it on video and we'll need to probably go through the process again (Thursday). But that's to (the Stars') credit. They have a team that has been together for a long time. There's quite a few players who have been there seven, eight, nine years now, so those kinds of looks are developed over time.''
Question: Was there anything on the bench that changed in the second half of the second period? Was there something said or done?
MURRAY: ``We addressed it at the end of the first period. We did see that tendency starting to come, right at the end of the first. We did bring attention to it between periods, and (the Stars) just continued to work at it. They got it into our zone and they got a lot of movement from their blue-line corps. They were cycling and finding guys, backing away and opening up. They were solid in what they were doing. I thought our composure was actually pretty good. We kept things to the outside. There were some shots coming from the perimeter, from the blue line, but sometimes you really can't do much about it when you're facing that kind of puck movement. So we dealt with it, we got some saves and we got reorganized. But we got reorganized more because of what we started to do inside their blue line with our (forwards). We found the middle of the ice again, on the defensive side of it. We had gotten too loose and they were able to make those controlled possession counters.''
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Rich Hammond has covered the Kings, on a full-time or part-time basis, since the 2000-01 season. He was the beat writer for the entire John Torchetti era and has witnessed Bob Miller singing country music in a Nashville honky-tonk bar. A native of Los Angeles, Rich has worked at the Daily News since 1999 and also serves as the paper's deputy sports editor. E-mail Rich at rich.hammond@dailynews.com.
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.com.
This is great stuff Rich, I'm sure all who plays some hockey really appreciate this type of insight into how coaches adjust and diagnose the opponents.
2-0 baby...
Nice work Gauthier...take a stupid penalty when we're already shorthanded and give Dallas life. I know you're a placekeeper until our other kids develop (or we get JJ back) but for goodness sakes can you go a game without a costly giveaway or penalty?
Yes this is a bit of an over the top comment, but that penalty was horrible. Maybe not as bad as the giveaway the other night, but still frustrating when we had a chance to go in up 2-0 against a team that we had on the ropes.
No threads for the game?
I have never seen the Kings frustrate teams the way they are this season. Lombardi and Murray deserve credit for that alone, so far.
It's hard to believe an LA team is making the other teams stars shake their heads. It's beautiful to watch.
Barch is a beotch. He should be suspended for leaving his feet and Tippett should get that fine he avoided last game. Disgraceful.
What is Greene doing out there? He is the weakest link.
Was it just me or did it look like Simmonds was flying past the stars all night, great game all around.
yeah baby. winner winner chicken dinner!