Better decisions needed

The Kings allowed two power-play goals to Buffalo last night, but that’s going to happen from time to time. The real red flag for the Kings was that the penalties that led to the power plays were often poor. Three of the penalties in particular — Jack Johnson’s elbowing (although questionable) and cross-checking, and Ryan’s Smyth’s holding — were particularly untimely, and two of those led to Buffalo power-play goals. Terry Murray was asked today about his concern level regarding the quality of penalties taken…

MURRAY: “We talked about it a bit. It’s a concern. Some of those calls are retaliatory, and that’s obviously a concern. The fact that (Buffalo’s Patrick) Kaleta is running around and trying to draw penalties, and he does get the job done for them, is something that we’ve got to be more aware of. You have to play around that. You have to be aware that he’s going to try to do his job, and make sure that our better players are not going to respond to that, and put the onus on the referees to make a call to maybe give us a power play as a result of it. He does it maybe three, four, five times.”