An Unfortunate Farewell

Terry Murray’s postgame thoughts…

(on whether there’s an easy answer for why the Kings lost third-period leads…)
MURRAY: “There’s an easy answer. Two of the best players in the league did it. The Sedin line was tremendous. They won the series, they won the game and, in each one of those games you’re talking about, they made the difference. That’s what the best players are supposed to do.”

(on when he felt the series shifted…)
MURRAY: “Well, I believed we were going to win tonight. We did everything right. I thought we poured it all in. I thought we had the perfect start. We had a 2-1 lead going into the third period and really had a lot of momentum going into that period. I didn’t think that it had slipped away totally, that’s for sure. It’s a little bit harder. You’re coming back and you’re backed into a corner, but that’s part of the adversity of playoff hockey. You’ve got to find a way to get out of it. The only way you can get out of it is by playing a team game, and I was proud of the way we came out and played with that mentality here tonight. Then you get it to a Game 7 and who knows. Anything can happen in those situations. I never felt that it did slip away. We made it hard on ourselves, but we brought it back to a great effort here tonight. I’m real proud of the way we played here tonight, as far as leaving it out there with a good team mentality, good system play.”

(on putting the season in perspective…)
MURRAY: “The season, it’s too hard, right now, to go back through that. In general, it was maybe a little bit better than what I expected at the start of the year. We ended up with 101 points. I did expect us to be in the playoffs. I did expect us to be a pretty good hockey club at the end of the day. We had stretches of games where we played simply outstanding, road games in particular. So I think the team has taken big strides in the right direction here. Our best players are the young guys, the kids that are 20, 21, 22 years old. That’s a great nucleus to continue to work with. The organization seems to be in pretty good shape, with the depth that it has in the minors and in junior.”

(on playing well but just getting beat by a “well-placed shot”…)
MURRAY: “That was not a well-placed shot. That was a broken stick. That winning goal, the defenseman came in and broke his stick. The puck just flutters around and it ends up with that very fortunate bounce and it ends up on their stick and it ends up being the winning goal. If that stick does not break, it probably gets through to the goaltender. It might have went over the net. Something different happens, that’s for sure. It was not a well-placed shot.”

(on his team’s effort…)
MURRAY: “The team played well. Very well. Everybody. We had four lines going, and I really liked what our fourth line was able to give us there, in limited minutes. Again, the two young guys in particular, they were playing 28, 29 minutes on the back end, and they did a great job. Scuderi did a great job, matched up against the Sedin line. In general, overall, it was what you wanted, what you needed from your team. Everybody poured it all in, and everybody still, when the game got to be a 2-2 game, still showed great composure, made plays. No one was panicking. We were doing good things on the breakouts and trying to generate plays into the offensive zone. So it was good.”

(on what he said to the team after the game…)
MURRAY: “I told them they played well, played a good game. There’s not a lot to say to the group right now. It’s more, see you in a couple days. We’ll send out messages to get everybody together. We’ll take a couple days to get away and then we’ll come back and have exit meetings  and start to talk about different things for the upcoming summer, and leave it at that.”

(on whether he believes that a young team has to learn to win by losing…)
MURRAY: “I guess I’m from the older school in that sense, because I do believe in that. Going back a few years, there were some tremendous hockey teams that kept on winning. They didn’t share it with anybody else, talking about the Oilers I guess, in particular, most recently, and Detroit. They don’t seem to want to relinquish that championship. You do have to go through adversity. There are difficult times and you’ve got to take a lot away from a series like this. Again, the one thing I did say to the team, these young guys in particular, is that this is a wonderful experience for your future. Again, come back to it, revisit it in a few days and think about what you just went through, to be able to draw some positives and some things that are going to benefit you as an athlete, as a player, in the future. I still feel we should have won this game, in my own mind. It’s hard. I thought we played well enough, and I really thought we deserved it at the end of the night, even though I’m standing here after a loss. I thought we’d be going to Game 7.”