Inspiration from the East?

There aren’t many situations comparable to the Kings’ current situation, in which they lost their top two scorers, Anze Kopitar and Justin Williams, to injuries in the span of three days. But there is one comparable situation, that of the Pittsburgh Penguins. The Penguins have been without Sidney Crosby (concussion) since Jan. 5 and they also lost Evgeni Malkin to a knee injury on Feb. 4. Today, Terry Murray was asked about drawing inspiration from the Penguins, who sit in fourth place in the Eastern Conference despite the injuries. Murray embraced the idea, but he might want to look closer at the numbers. In their first 12 games without both Crosby and Malkin, the Penguins went 3-6-3, and didn’t win any of those games in regulation. On the other hand, the Penguins are 8-2-0 in their last 10 games, but with only seven games remaining, the Kings can’t afford to type of adjustment-period struggles that the Penguins seemed to go through initially…

MURRAY: “Pittsburgh has done an incredible job with Malkin and Crosby out of the lineup. They’re really relying on their structure, their defensive game, their checking game. Their back end, with (Marc-Andre) Fleury, has been outstanding. Fleury has probably been their MVP over the year. He has played tremendous during this stretch without the top guys in there. The other thing that they have on their side is that they have won. That’s an attitude. You know how to dig in and go the extra foot, in those situations. That’s something that we will learn. We’re going to be put in a situation right now where, to me, it’s going to be a great learning curve for a lot of these young guys, to figure this out, play hard every shift, rely on your teammates and all those cliches that you talk about all the time. Most importantly, now, you’ve really got to play hard with what you’ve got. The guys have to understand that, and we’ll get through it.”

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