Murray postgame quotes

Terry Murray’s postgame thoughts…

(on the win…)

MURRAY: “That’s a real hard game, and it was a tremendous effort. The players take that into the room at the start of the game. They understand that there’s a responsibility to come out and play hard. We knew we would have a good crowd here tonight, and we have to make sure that we’re bringing that road attitude back home here after a tremendous road trip. I loved the start of the game. The first period was exactly what you wanted. There was good intensity, both physical and mental intensity. Guys were alert. There were good plays being made. That’s an interesting game, actually. There was a lot of speed. The ice was being used. The Rangers really spread the ice out, so we had to have great awareness on the checking part of the game.”

(on the first home game after the long road trip…)
MURRAY: “It’s hard, coming back that first game with one day off. There’s no question, that’s probably the most difficult thing a team has to face, as far as a challenge. We talked about it in our pregame. I brought it up, obviously, the importance of bringing that attitude. There were five wins on the road, and now bringing that back in front of your home (fans), but bringing that hard work, no cutting corners. I said to the guys, `Hey, look, you have to take this into the dressing room yourself. You have to get yourselves ready to go now.’ I can’t say enough about the character in the room. We’ve got a great leadership group, and they took it from there.”

(on the Kings’ winning streak…)
MURRAY: “You go back and break down this year, and we were a pretty good hockey club at the start of this year. We were in first place in the National Hockey League. You’re not going to maintain that intense level of play for an extended period of time. You know you’re going to hit a little bit of a bump along the way, and we did. We had a difficult time with our seven games at home, but you learn from it. You just try to deal with it the right way, emotionally, and make sure that you’re able to understand some reasons why it happens. You get on the road and you know that you have to keep it pretty plain, pretty simple, everybody on the same page, and just stay with it throughout the 60 minutes. If you do that… The good teams, the teams that win all the time, those teams do that stuff. It’s the same. You stay with it, no matter if you’re down by a goal, two goals. You have to just keep moving on. A lot of the times, it will work out for you.”

(on Brown and Kopitar’s recent strong play…)
MURRAY: “They know a lot of responsibility falls on their shoulders. Kopitar is back where he was. In fact, maybe even a little bit better than what he was at the start of the year. And Brownie is more relaxed. There was a stretch of time when he was carrying the team on his shoulders, trying to make things happen himself, getting big hits, trying to score the big goals, trying to do everything. It’s impossibel to do. Just go out and play with a power-forward attitude, a power-forward game, keeping it simple, and good things are resulting from that.”

(on Kopitar’s recent strong play…)
MURRAY: “When the start, with Smytty and Willy, happened, it was incredible the roll they were on. With injuries, you lose a little bit of that chemistry. Some of the confidence starts to go away on you, and you start pressing. That’s, I think, the story of both Brownie and Kopi here. They wanted to make sure things were going the right way, and they were taking a great deal of responsibility on their own shoulders. As young guys, that’s probably a little bit of a hole that most every guy will fall into at some time or another. Right now, there’s an understanding that it’s a team game. We have to play well as a group in order to have any kind of success, and they get back to doing their part, and now they’re adding to that. We can see Kopi, with his attitude. It’s fantastic. Every time the puck is on his stick now, he has an attack mindset and he wants to be aggressive to the net.”

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