Kings’ lines staying consistent

Over the past couple years, it’s been something of a running joke, Terry Murray’s tendency to change line combinations. It gets more attention than it should, because there’s no coach in the NHL who doesn’t change lines when things aren’t going well, but the Kings players have had a good nature and joked about it. This season, though, it’s been different. The first line of Anze Kopitar, Simon Gagne and Justin Williams has been together all season, and the other lines have, for the most part, changed only because of injuries to players such as Dustin Penner and Scott Parse.

WILLIAMS: “We certainly have noticed. I think, some days we lose and he switches them up during the games and you expect, the next day, there to be a little bit of a shuffle, but we’ve always reverted back to what we started the year with. If you said, 22 games in, that we’d have the same line, I wouldn’t believe you, but we started off quite well and we’ve kind of slowed down a bit of late. He has given us a chance to get hot again. I know we’re going to do that soon.’’