Rest, but also work

Between Monday, Tuesday and today, the Kings got in approximately five hours of practice time. They incorporated four injured players back into the fold and spent significant time working on special teams and did a ton of conditioning skating. Did they get, out of those three days, what Terry Murray had hoped?

MURRAY: “Pretty close. I wanted to go an extra little while here with some 5-on-5 scrimmage, but time goes by very quickly and you start to lose focus and concentration, so I just moved by it and got into the skating. Overall, I was very pleased with the work, the intensity and the concentration that everybody brought. Part of that was due to the fact that it was set up, going back two months ago, about the importance of coming to these practices and getting ourselves ready to go with good hard work again.”

Then again, there weren’t any games. Teams can practice for days upon days and still not approach the intensity needed to win a game, something Murray said he is mindful of as Saturday’s game against Phoenix approaches…

MURRAY: “It’s hard. That’s very hard to do. So you try to recreate a lot of the game scenarios, within the practice. Throughout the practice, you’re asking for total concentration, execution. Do things hard, do them fast, with intensity, but bottom line, it’s very hard to create that game scenario. That’s where we have to be very focused when we get back at it on the 26th.”