Murray postgame quotes (Nov. 19)

Terry Murray’s postgame thoughts…

(on whether the missed penalty shot was a turning point…)
MURRAY: “It was a critical time, but I would answer today that it was a small part of it, the missed opportunity there to score. Things turned after they made it 1-1. They scored right away on the power play after we got a short-handed goal. That, I thought, was really going to be a huge momentum boost for us. I don’t know what happened on that. I haven’t watched the replay on it. I just remember Brownie [Dustin Brown], it looked like he almost got tackled there as he was coming out to the point, to the loose puck. But they score right away and started to feed off of some of the turnovers and some of the decisions that we made to get the puck back to them. They’re covering you over the top so well. As a veteran hockey club, they came right after us with a lot of momentum. By the end of the second period, they had the game going the way they wanted and we ended up chasing it.”

(on Richards’ shorthanded goal…)
MURRAY: “He is one of the better penalty killers in the game, I think. He has always got that anticipation. He’s ready for those plays that he might be able to jump on, to put some pressure on the other team. He did it again tonight. Again, that to me was a huge play. Against a team like Detroit, that should be a great opportunity for you to feed off of that kind of momentum. `Let’s kill the rest of this penalty, let’s get back to 5-on-5 and keep going.’ They put a lot of water on the fire right away, and it just seemed like we never got our legs going after that. That was maybe the one thing that disappointed me as much as anything in the game, is that we were not skating anywhere near the way we skated in the last three games. They recognized it and they took advantage of us.”

(on his third-period line-combination changes…)
MURRAY: “You’re just trying to change things up, to get the offense going at that time. We had Loktionov in the middle, Stoll (on the wing) and Brad Richardson goes up, for some speed through the puck, maybe, on the forecheck, to give Kopi and Gags an opportunity to recover some pucks. Williams goes to Loktionov. I’m trying to find some balance for scoring, with that change. It’s not something I’m going to stay with. Lokti will go back to left wing. I think he has played fine on the left side. But at that time, when it is 3-1, you’re trying to find something that’s good.”

(on whether the Kings were “chasing the game”…)
MURRAY: “It’s a good way of describing it. I thought that’s exactly what was going on. We were chasing the game. (The Red Wings) moved it very well. They moved a lot of the time, though, off our turnovers. That was the thing that upset me, in the course of the game, is that we were too far above it. Against a team like Detroit, that play over the top of you, you’ve got to bring everybody back, you’ve got to stay low. You’ve got to make those little handoff support plays. Tonight, it was one pass and we thought we were done. We were resting, when it should have been, `OK, I’ve got to stay involved, I’ve got to get it back and I maybe have to bring it out the other side.’ I thought we brought a lot of the issues on ourselves.”