They’ve been through this before…

Those looking for positives in this 1-7 skid by the Kings…well, the term “needle in haystack” comes to mind, but there is one thing. Remember, of course, that this isn’t the first time the Kings have pulled this, this season. Starting with that dreadful loss at San Jose on Nov. 15, the Kings went 1-7 in their next eight, and they needed a shootout at Boston merely to get that win. How did they respond? With a 4-0-1 burst, including two victories over Detroit, and a 9-2-1 run in their next 12 games. Of course, that led directly to this skid… At any rate, if nothing else, the Kings have come out of something like this before, and Terry Murray was asked today what he could take away from the previous skid…

MURRAY: “You come out on the other side. You just don’t want it to take a long time. It doesn’t matter what team you are or who you are. There always will be stretches in a season that are going to be really difficult, hard spots, emotionally very demanding, physically very demanding. It’s hard on your players, on your organization, on the fans. But you’ve got to hope that you come out of it quickly, and you do come out of it quickly if you’re paying attention to the parts of the game that need that correction right away. I think that the L.A. Kings right now, I think that we’re looking so much at everything that’s there, rather than just this (narrow) important part of the game. `On the ice, here’s what needs to be done on my shift. Here’s what needs to be done in this situation.’ It’s not the 60 minutes. It’s this 45 seconds. If you take that kind of an approach, and really give it a good push, I think you move through these parts of the season that are very hard, and you come out the other side and you’re going to be a better player, a better team, because of it.

“That’s the way you have to approach it. As they say, the devil is in the details. That’s the focus for our team here, now, is managing the puck properly. Get it in, clean breakouts, everybody on page with that to help get our offensive game established, to get our confidence on that side of the game going again.”