At home during the road trip

It’s been discussed quite a bit already, but what is commonly being referred to as the Kings’ “10-game road trip” is really three different road trips. Three games are in the books, and now the Kings are home until Wednesday morning, when they will fly to Pittsburgh in advance of Thursday’s game. The gap allowed the Kings to fly home from Calgary, take yesterday off and get two days of practice in El Segundo while otherwise enjoying the comforts of home. Then, after a six-game trip, the Kings will have another three days off before playing at Anaheim. So while it’s 10 games over 23 days, the Kings will get to spend seven of those nights in their own beds. That makes a big difference. Today, Terry Murray — who previously coached in Washington, Philadelphia and Florida — talked about the uniqueness of having a road trip broken up, at least on the West Coast.

MURRAY: “On the East Coast, this is kind of a normal part of the regular season, because it’s so convenient to get back home and spend a couple days at home, practice and head out again. One year with the Flyers, it was an 11-game road trip, and we were back home like four times. It’s an easy thing to do. On the West, it’s much harder. But I really like this. This was Marshall’s idea [director of team operations Marshall Dickerson] and Solly’s idea [vice president of hockey operations Jeff Solomon] and they worked hard to get this put together the best they could, with what was presented to them. I think it’s fantastic to be able to get back and get on the ice and have them spend some time with their families. It breaks the month up and gives you a good short-term focus on the schedule.”

The Kings went through a lengthy practice today and will be back on the ice tomorrow at 10 a.m., giving them a rare chance to get in back-to-back practices at home during the middle of a season.

MURRAY: “Good practice today. I liked the way everybody came to work. There was a lot of skating, a lot of movement on the ice for the hour and 20 minutes. We’ll get back at it again tomorrow. So, two good days, and we need it. it’s been a while since we’ve been able to get in hard work in practice, and some skating at the end of the practice, to really get specific on that. I feel good about these two days.”