One more Kings note...
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Emptying out the notebook before the Kings-Flyers game....
Sean O’Donnell, a healthy scratch at Carolina and at Atlanta on the Kings’ recent five-game trip, joked that his absence was ‘a time-out,’ but his pride was surely wounded.
The veteran defenseman hated sitting, but he did praise Coach Terry Murray for pulling him aside to explain the decision instead of letting him simply be surprised by it.
‘We went through it. It’s between Terry and I, but it was a good talk,’ said O’Donnell, who earned his way back into the lineup and is especially valuable with Rob Scuderi still idled by a lower-body injury.
‘There was no yelling. There was no stomping of the feet. Just an adult-to-adult explanation of why things needed to be done. As a player, you don’t like it, but you have to be professional about it and I knew it wasn’t going to be a permanent thing. In an 82-game schedule there are going to be bumps somewhere.’
O’Donnell said Murray didn’t indicate if any more timeouts were looming.
‘I learned a long time ago you don’t try to get into their head or wonder what they’re thinking,’ he said of coaches. ‘Just do your best and you kind of do what they say and you trust that they are doing it for the best of the team.
‘After this many years I don’t think I deserve any kind of preferential treatment on the ice. The one thing I was appreciative of is the fact that he made an effort to pull me aside before practice and just explain it to me. Even if I wasn’t crazy about what I heard, if someone explains it to you like that ... that’s the only thing I think I deserve is an explanation. Other than not playing, I have no problem with the way things were handled.’
More later at www.latimes.com/sports
-- Helene Elliott