The old saying goes, “If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry.” Well, the last game between the Kings and Detroit — when the Red Wings scored seven consecutive goals and went on to a 7-4 victory — was bound to be brought up sometime today, and when it was, Murray laughed at the let’s-get-this-out-of-the-way nature of the question and answer. Murray took the question seriously though, in terms of what the Kings needed to take away from that loss and apply tonight…
MURRAY: “The biggest thing, against Detroit, is managing the the puck the right way. As soon as you turn back into your own D-zone and get away from north attitude on your breakouts and your counters, you think you’re going to bring it back and regroup and do something extra, they have a green light and they come very quickly. They’re an experienced team that reads those situations. They forced us to make the wrong decisions on several of those goals the other night. When you go back through all their games, that’s their attitude, is to stay over top, make teams come through them, and as soon as there is a bobbled puck, a bad pass, a decision that’s not the right one, that’s when we’re coming.”
Question: Do you even show video of that last game to the players, or do you just try to forget about it?
MURRAY: “After the game, the next day, we did (show video). And it’s the stuff I just talked about. We had the puck on the breakout, behind our goal line, in a D-to-D situation. We hesitated, we turned back one more time for the second option and they jumped on us and they scored a goal on us. That’s exactly the clip that I showed from their game against Buffalo. It was the same play, the two D messing around and being casual. They made that third D-to-D pass, and the puck bobbled, the D turned his back and they scored on it. That’s a team that knows how to play with the right kind of attitude, a veteran team that has been through it many times. To play well against Detroit, you have to get it up and get it going.”
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