The need to counter speed

As noted in the last couple days, the Edmonton Oilers have been one of the surprise teams in the NHL this season, with their 7-2-2 start. The Oilers have developed a reputation as a team full of young, fast, talented forwards, even though it’s really their defensive/goaltending work that has turned things around so far. Still, there’s no question that forwards such as Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Taylor Hall and Jordan Eberle will be threats against the Kings, much as the Colorado Avalanche provided a threat with their fleet-footed forwards in the league game. In trying to counter that, Terry Murray said the work starts at the other end of the rink, and that the Kings need to make sure they’re not putting themselves in a bad spot before the puck even gets to the neutral zone.

MURRAY: “The game in Colorado, when you go back through it — and we talked about it between the second and third periods — is that we were giving up too much coming at us on the rush. There were some odd(-man) rushes that were dangerous. So we’re going to have to be making sure that we have awareness to correcting that part of our game, so that it just carries over here. I don’t want to get into bad habits of having three deep in the offensive zone and not coming up with (the puck). If they have three, we have three, but if they have two, we’ve got to make sure that our third man is in proper position above the puck. That will be the focus here tonight.’’