Arena Gets Great Reviews, Unlike First Practice

For Andy Murray, it was a time to get his point for the day across: Hold the puck so you can hold a lead. Don’t send the puck to the other end of the ice just to get some real estate between it and your goal when you’re up a goal or two.

Especially in the third period at Florida and Washington.

For the King players, though, it was time to begin to establish home-ice advantage, and on Tuesday, in their first practice at the Staples Center, they spent time looking around when, in the opinion of their coach, they should have been working on tape-to-tape passes.

“For the first part of the practice, the ice was a lot better than our team was,” Murray said. “. . . In a new building, I think our guys were a little awestruck. We weren’t focusing on the things we wanted to do in practice as much as what was going on around us.”

What was around them was about 2,000 fans, most of them season-ticket holders, getting a glimpse of the building for the first time and voicing their approval.

That approval was matched by the players.

“This is a state-of-the-art building and one that will be modeled after,” defenseman Rob Blake said after spending part of his time on the ice looking around for his sky box.

The question before the house, though, is how long before Staples Center becomes a home-ice advantage?

For now, it’s still like a trip.

“It’ll take a few games to get used to things,” Blake said. “We’re used to playing in different buildings. We’ll adapt quickly.”

Whether it’s quickly enough for Murray is another question.

“It better be by Wednesday night against Boston,” he said.

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Left wing Steve McKenna is making a quick recovery from laser eye surgery to repair a torn retina and is expected to make this weekend’s trip to Calgary and Edmonton. Whether he will play is another question.

The Kings are 1-1-1 since McKenna suffered the eye injury when he caught a stick in St. Louis.

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King President Tim Leiweke said that extra seats will be installed in some of the boxes for the team’s opener and that a crowd of more than 19,000 is expected.

He also promised a big show for the opener.

“There will be no flaming Ducks, I promise, ever,” he said, jabbing at the Kings’ rivals to the south.

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The last of the 160 private boxes at the Staples Center was sold Tuesday.