alt="LA Kings Insider with Rich Hammond" />Here are Terry Murray’s postgame thoughts, starting with the question about whether the Kings are exceeding Murray’s expectations so far this season…
MURRAY: “It could be, a bit. We’re coming together a little bit faster than maybe what I anticipated. I really didn’t have a benchmark, as far as the number of games, but I expected us to play good and to be involved and compete in every game, and have the opportunity to win every game. We want to keep the standard high. The bar has been raised, and we want to make sure that we’re giving ourselves that chance every night. But yeah, to answer your question directly, we’re exceeding a little bit, but not by five or six games. I expected us to be in pretty good shape at this time.”
(on the game…)
MURRAY: “That was a hard game out there. It wasn’t a hard physical game, but it was more track-meet like. Lots of energy.”
(on winning on back-to-back nights…)
MURRAY: “Great back-to-back wins. Two points. That’s always the most important thing, is getting two points. At the end of the day, when you’re sitting there at the end of the regular season, you’re not looking back, always, at how pretty some situations were. But two points, in a real tough stretch of games for us. There have been five conference games here that have been very demanding, against premier teams, and then the other nonconference, against Ottawa, was still another demanding game. The guys dug in. It wasn’t always the prettiest out there tonight, but we found a way to get it done.”
(on selecting players for the shootout…)
MURRAY: “We have a group of guys that we call on, not in any particular order, but there’s not going to be any surprises if your name is called out of that group. That’s something that we put together this year. We kind of go in that direction. It’s tough to know, sometimes, who should be the next guy, because we have not been scoring a lot of goals recently. We haven’t had a lot of practice to continually go at that part of the game. But it worked out here tonight.”
(on winning games within the division…)
MURRAY: “We’re getting better. If you’re going to win in the National Hockey League, you’ve got to start to believe in yourself. You’ve got to have the right attitude, and you’ve got to be able to win close games, one-goal games. That, in itself, tells me that this team is starting to come together, starting to believe in each other, growing, and we’re heading in the right direction.”
One thing I love about what the Kings are doing is, somewhere out there, there are a bunch of hockey fans saying, “Wait, Kopitar has a long dry spell so the Kings should be dropping back in the standings… but, but, but, they KEEP winning! What the hell is going on out there in Los Angeles?”
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This Kings team is exciting this year! Last year, we were hopeful, but now we know we can make it.
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The future coach of the year hath spoken…
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It is one thing to keep winning … its quite another to keep winning against the best teams in your own conference. Kings aren’t picking on the weak links, they beating the best the NHL has to offer.
We got a wickendly hard road trip coming up. Canucks who seem to kick our rears every time and the Flames … they won’t be in a good mood when they see us in their own rink.
If we get 3 out of 6 points on that trip I’ll be happy.
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Goaltending, goaltending, goaltending.
Last year our goaltending situation was not great early in the season. That alone attributed to a slow start. But this year it’s whole different story. With Quick in the nets. This team believes that they have a chance every night. That alone is a huge reason for the early success so fart this season.
There are still numerous breakdowns in the defensive zone. But Quick has been there to save the day.
What a difference a goaltender can make for a team.
If the kings make it to the playoffs. Then Quick should be chosen as the MVP for this team.
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I’m going to use andy murray’s expectations and go for 8 more points over the next 4 games. 4 one-game winning streaks. Who’s with me?
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Hear, hear! Tantrum, with just a few games to go before the mid-point, TM is edging Tippet. There is little doubt that the two of them should be finalists if their teams maintain their current position.
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PakiFro, on general principle I never do anything the way Andy Murray would do it.
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Looking too far ahead is actually a way of “resting on your laurels” by gloating on your accomplishemnts so far. All I know is that we play Dallas and they have tons of overtime games this year so we want to play strong through 2 and dictate pace, then adapt to game situation in 3rd period and win win win. If we do that, our reward will be to plan for the next game. Let the points totals take care of themselves…
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I’m still waiting for the games where we blow the other team out OR get a shutout.
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