Too much hype?

I never really found the proper time, or context, to use these quotes, but a couple days ago, Terry Murray was asked an interesting question and gave an interesting answer. The question, basically, was, “Do the Kings run the risk of getting too full of themselves?” Over the past few weeks, they’ve had national (including many Canadian) reporters talking about them, and they’ve had Anze Kopitar profiled by TSN and The Hockey News.

For a young team, that is still learning how to win, is it too much, too soon? Do they run the risk of believing their own hype?

MURRAY: “I think it’s great that there’s some recognition coming from the world stage, the North American stage. That’s part of the process of pushing everyone up to the next level, to live up to those expectations on a game-to-game basis. It’s good pressure. It’s accountability, responsibility, and you just deal with it as you move through becoming a better player and becoming a better team. I actually had this conversation in a meeting with Kopi in a meeting three or four weeks ago. `How are you doing? How is this, leading the league in scoring, effecting you as a player?’

“His answer was very candid. He said, `Look, it’s part of the territory. If you’re having great success, you’re going to get recognition. Whenever I haven’t scored in eight or nine, 10 games, there’s other stuff that comes back at you.’ He’s trying to be very level-headed and emotionally correct about it. Most important is that you come to play, come to work, and things take care of themselves after that. We’ve got a good group of guys in there, guys who have won the Stanley Cup and come out the other side winners. To me, that leadership group and those veteran guys are really helping out with a lot of the young guys, to understand how to deal with it.”