Now Is the Time to Come Up Big

Until now, it’s all been preliminary, 59 games of warm-up.

“I think the bottom line is . . . that we’re all going to be evaluated on how we play these next 23 games of the remainder of the season,” Coach Andy Murray said Tuesday. “These games and the playoffs, that’s how our season is going to be evaluated.”

The problem with the rest of the season is that the Kings have fallen into a disturbing pattern.

“We’ve won some big games lately that I think people expected we wouldn’t win,” said Murray, reeling off Phoenix, Dallas and Detroit as vanquished opponents in that class. “A couple of games, we didn’t play as well as we wanted . . . Buffalo . . . last night [at Edmonton] . . . against Anaheim. Those are games we would be considered having at least a 50-50 chance to win. The other games we would be considered [underdogs].

” . . . We have to be a team that plays well in big games . . . and every game among the next 23 is big.”

*

Donald Audette will be halfway back to where he wants to be tonight when he takes shifts with the second line, centered by Bryan Smolinski and with Glen Murray at right wing.

The rest of the way involves scoring. Audette last did that on Dec. 14.

“I’ve never gone through something like this,” said Audette, who has been skating on the third line--centered by Ian Laperriere--since returning to the lineup four games ago after having missed 15 because of a sprained ankle.

“I’ve always been a guy who scored goals: two in four games, three in five, four in seven.”

Audette’s skating with Smolinski and Murray reunites a line that was together the first day of training camp and continually until Audette was injured. His replacing Jason Blake at left wing is designed to jump start Audette and add some offense to the line. Blake has shown a lot of energy, but he hasn’t scored since Dec. 8.

TONIGHT

at Calgary, 6 PST

Fox Sports Net

* Site--Canadian Airlines Saddledome.

* Radio--KRLA (1110).

* Records--Kings 28-24-7-3, Flames 25-29-6-5.

* Record vs. Flames--2-0.

* Update--Last Thursday, Calgary was coming off a 10-game winless streak (which included a 4-3 loss in overtime to the Kings on Sean O’Donnell’s broken-stick goal) and the playoffs looked farther away than a Canadian prairie sunset. Then the Flames swept a two-game weekend series with archrival Edmonton, and suddenly Calgary is only four points from eighth-place San Jose.