Last night’s first line

As noted here, the Kings started last night’s game with a eyebrow-raising line of Anze Kopitar, Dustin Brown and Raitis Ivanans. Was Terry Murray trying to make some type of statement? Not really. Turns out, Murray and his staff had watched tape of Tampa Bay’s game against the Ducks on Friday, when the Lightning skated a first line of two skill players, Vincent Lecavalier and Vaclav Prospal, with a “tough guy” in Evgeny Artyukhin. So Murray countered with a similar line of Kopitar-Brown-Ivanans. When Tampa put Martin St. Louis back on the first line with Lecavalier and Prospal, the Kings put Alexander Frolov back on their first line. So that’s the reason, for the curious…

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