“Small steps,” and (again), the “emotional level”

Jake Muzzin spoke earlier today about how he liked the feeling in the Kings’ room on the morning that followed the first win of the season. It was a familiar feeling, one shared by a fellow defenseman who was excited to open a brand new season.

“It’s nice to get into that situation again. It’s fun to do,” Robyn Regehr said. “It’s fun to be in the middle of things, especially when we as a team are trying to get going again. Get our emotional level up, which was lower than we wanted to the first couple of games, but it’s been getting better. We’re getting on the right track and we’re going in the right direction. Still, it can be better and that’s what it’s about. You want guys to get involved and I think right off the bat you saw a much better effort by our whole team. We brought the puck in. We started forechecking, finishing checks and doing things like that. That’s what our team is supposed to do. It’s what we’re built to do.”

Ahh, yes, the “emotional level.” For those who followed last Wednesday’s opener and the practices that followed, and paid attention to the television and radio broadcasts of the game against Arizona and last night against Winnipeg, it was clear that the Kings were still looking to hit that raised level of competition befitting a regular season NHL game.

According to Darryl Sutter, “I think our focus has been good.”

“It’s just hard getting everybody on there. You don’t get everybody at once, but you try and get most of them. That’s something you work at all the time.”

Regehr denied that the Kings’ heavy preseason travel schedule – they finished the preseason slate with a six-game road trip – had anything to do with a pair of losses to open the season.

“I don’t think so because we were at home for two months pretty much before that. I really don’t think that,” he said.

“I think it was purely emotional. I think we had a good camp and a successful preseason. I thought practices were good that way. It’s just the emotional level is so high at the peak of the playoffs, which is the finals, and then you come back and it’s really difficult to get it back up to where it needs to be right away again…and that’s the big challenge. For other teams, some of them haven’t played for a long time. So they’re there. They’re chomping. They’re ready to roll. We need to get back and get going. That’s really all it is. It’s something we’re aware of, we’ve talked about and now we need to deal with. We have, I think. Like I said, we’re making small steps and we need to continue to do that.”