It’s the little things in life…

There’s a fine line between terms such as “urgency,” “desperation” and “panic” when it comes to a team on a losing streak. The first two terms can be positive, but the latter is always negative, so it’s now the Kings’ challenge to play with urgency while avoiding the type of panicked play that would only dig a deeper hole. To that end, Terry Murray said today that he is trying to keep a narrow focus. That doesn’t make for exciting quotes, but in Murray’s mind, keeping a narrow focus, on fundaments, represents the first step toward getting the Kings’ overall house in order. It needs to happen quickly. A couple weeks ago, everyone acknowledged the importance of this season-long eight-game homestand, and now the Kings need a 4-0 finish merely to end it at .500. Murray talked today about trying to break the losing streak…

MURRAY: “Everybody wants to do the job the right way, and win the games and dig in and compete. But sometimes you’re going to go through these situations like this, unfortunately. We’re in the middle of it right now. I go back and look at the games we’ve played recently. As I said to the team today, the Anaheim game, the game at San Jose were absolutely tremendous games. We go into Phoenix and we’re backed off on the focus. I keep calling it that mental connection, emotional connection. We’re backed off on that, and whenever you start to back away a little bit, from your focus to the game, it’s the detail part of the game that starts to fall apart. We reviewed that stuff today in our team meeting, with the video. All it is is one situation, one lost faceoff and maybe the center iceman leaves his man. That’s where the detail part changes.

“Chaos — it looks like chaos, but it’s not — because actually we were in pretty good shape after that one D-zone coverage where they really cycled the puck for an extended period of time, but there was no danger, there was no one in great scoring situations, we were on the right side of people. But it all started because of one breakdown. And that’s what happens whenever you’re playing against teams that are skating teams, a good team. They’re in the playoffs. They’re a good team. They recognize the opportunity and they jump on it and get themselves going with good confidence. That’s where we’ve got to bring it back here to, to the fundaments and take care of the details, be intelligent with the puck management, and we’ll get it back on track. Because it’s not that far away. That’s the point I’m trying to take to the players. It’s just this little bit of stuff that we need to be better at, and everything will fall in place.”