Kings Falling Far Short in Murray’s Eyes

Andy Murray figures the rarefied air of the Western Conference playoff race has some of the Kings gasping.

After Cliff Ronning scored 51 seconds into overtime to give Nashville a 2-1 win over the Kings, Murray, their coach, wasn’t as disgusted about the single goal they squeezed out of their 42 shots as he was about that goal not being enough to win.

“I still don’t think we have enough people playing with the kind of desperation you have to play with at this time of year,” Murray said. “There’s a few guys who need to take a look at how they played tonight.

“It’s time to quit talking about it and just go out and play.”

Those guys will get a hard look at their games today through the magic of video, and chances are they’ll get a lecture from Murray on the care and feeding of a playoff contender.

He wouldn’t single out which Kings came up short--”you guys figure it out,” he said--but Jozef Stumpel, Bryan Smolinski and probably Luc Robitaille can expect to spend some time with Murray.

They are the linchpins of an offense that has only three goals over its last three games, and of a power play that went 0 for 3 Sunday night and stands at three for its last 50.

The Kings earned a point for the regulation tie, giving them 81, enough to keep them in fifth place in the West.

It’s a position many of them have been in only rarely, because the Kings have made the playoffs only once in the last six seasons, and that year--1998--were coasting at this point in the season.

Whether that’s responsible for their 0-2-1-1 record the last three games is open to question, but their coach isn’t questioning.

“We’ve got some guys who should be excited to be where we are, and I don’t know if they’re excited enough,” he said flatly. “I don’t think they’re comfortable. I just don’t know if they know how to deal with what we’re going through right now.”

The Predators are plenty excited and know exactly how to deal with what they are going through.

“We aren’t mathematically out of it, but we’re pretty close,” said goalie Mike Dunham, who turned back 41 shots, many of them spectacularly, in earning his 17th win of the season, a personal best.

“There’s not a lot of pressure on us. It’s almost like the pressure is on them, because they’re supposed to beat us and get into the playoffs.”

Playing loose, Nashville finished a four-game trip through Detroit, Colorado, Phoenix and in Staples Center and earned six of a possible eight points.

And pressure, by the way, is in the eye of the beholder.

“Don’t look at Nashville as the bottom team in the league,” Murray said. “As we told our team before the game, they may not be playing for the playoffs, but they’re playing for something more important: their jobs.”

Dunham’s job was challenged early and often, beginning before most of the announced 17,920 had settled into their seats.

For half of the opening period, the game was played in Nashville’s end of the ice, but it took 12:43 for the Kings to do anything with their advantage.

That came with Dunham on his back after a save, trying to scramble to his skates while the Kings’ Stumpel and Nashville’s Drake Berehowsky wrestled for the puck on the end boards.

Stumpel won the tussle, backhanded a pass to Jason Blake, who found himself alone with the puck on his stick and Dunham at his mercy.

While Dunham spent his time downrange in a shooting gallery--and while the Kings were failing to win loose pucks in front of the net--goalie Jamie Storr needed only a remote control to join the rest of Southern California’s Sunday couch potatoes.

Storr faced only 14 shots in the first two periods, none of them particularly threatening, but had Greg Johnson in his lap when Karlis Skrastins whirled and fired from long range, 51 seconds into the third.

Skrastins’ shot hit Johnson, then the net to tie the score 1-1.

After trying to protect a lead, the Kings were left to protect the tie and squeeze out a point. The idea was to play for overtime and get the extra point there.

They got half of it done.

Ronning foiled the other half by skating off the bench on a line change that found Smolinski going one way on defense and Ronning going the other to take a pass from Bill Houlder and score the game-winner.

It left Murray looking glum at a time when the standings say he should be happy.

“Here I’m talking like a guy who got clobbered tonight, instead of one whose team probably had about four to one more scoring chances,” he said.