Key to success? End the skids

Many factors go into a successful regular season, and one of them is avoiding losing streaks. Losing one game is quite normal. Losing two in a row isn’t unusual. But when the losing streaks get to three games or more, that’s when things start to get away from teams. On their way to the Stanley Cup last season, the Chicago Blackhawks only one three losing streaks longer than two games, and none of them were longer than three games. Last season, the Kings had only four losing streaks of more than two games. This season, they already have three, including the current one. Today, I asked Terry Murray about the importance of avoiding those regular-season losing streaks…

MURRAY: “I thought we had it done last night. We played well. But you come out of that game, and I just want to keep doing the same things we were doing, and build on the positive stuff. There was a lot of really good play on both sides of the puck by our team (against the Sharks). The bottom line is, you’ve got to find a way to score. If we continue pushing the puck to the net the way we did, and have better net presence with better screens, good stuff can happen. (Saturday) night, in that game, it’s very hard to attack with possession and make plays because of their attitude. That was three (games) in four days for them, on the road, and they’re just collapsing right back to their blue line with five guys, basically. So there’s no offensive attacks, really, presented there at all. It has to get down to an ugly goal. I thought we showed it at times, and other times we got away from it.”