Kings look for bounce-back after rough night

One day after their most lopsided loss of the season, the Kings went through a drill-intensive 45-minute practice. There can’t be much time for looking back. A rested, motivated Phoenix Coyotes team will be at Staples Center tomorrow for a game that could go a long way toward determining which team finishes fourth in the Western Conference and gets home-ice advantage for at least the first round. The Kings, essentially, didn’t do much of anything well last night against San Jose, so Terry Murray was asked after practice today whether, when addressing the players, he chose to ignore last night’s game or break it down through meetings, video, etc.…

MURRAY: “We don’t forget about it. I addressed it briefly. You’ve got to talk about things. The one thing that I mentioned in the pre-practice meeting that we had was that, at this time of the year, if you’re going to be a good team, if you’re going to win games, everybody has to be arriving physically, everybody has to be arriving emotionally and, as importantly, is just to play with the structure and system. It’s so hard out there today, that if you get away from any part of your system at any time, and there’s a breakdown and you get a team like last night, they’re a seasoned hockey club that is going to read those counters and make those plays and come back at you real hard, which they did several times. We touched on that at the start of the game last night. Something didn’t quite click.”