Kings still adapting to changes?

After yesterday’s practice, Terry Murray talked about the need for improved play coming out of the Kings’ end. Willie Mitchell has also addressed that, noting that system changes put in place turning training camp and still taking hold, and might be contributing to the Kings’ uneven play at the start of this season…

MITCHELL: “As a team, we think we’re much better than what we’ve been playing so far. In hockey, they say that when you’re thinking, you’re in trouble, and I think we’re still thinking a little too much on the ice, and just not reacting. We have had some system changes, and we’re not yet completely automatic on that yet, with our reads. I think, as a group, that’s our number-one thing, is just trying to get our reads down, our system down, and play that to a tee. I think our effort is there, but sometimes you can work too hard, just because you’re not all on the same page. I think that’s the thing we have to get better at.

“It’s not huge changes. It’s reads. It’s one of those things where it is a read. It’s not automatic. It’s not dumbed-down so much that you know it every time. There is a decision to be made, with plays in the neutral zone. It’s just a matter of getting to the point where it’s automatic. It’s repetition. The more repetitions we do, the better we’re going to get at it. Those are some things that we need to improve on. This stretch of games we’ve had have helped us. We were fortunate early on. We started 6-2, but I think we just played so-so hockey, compared to how we’re capable of playing as a team. We were getting away with a lot of stuff. Now it’s kind of allowed us, playing against some better teams here in this last little stretch, to bring the work ethic — which we’re doing, which is great — to get out of this little funk that we’re in. We need to work hard and work smart. That’s our next step to getting where we should be as a team.’’