Respect No Issue This Time Around

Before last season’s playoffs, Coach Andy Murray made a big deal about the Kings’ lack of respect. This year, Murray doesn’t have to be as vocal to get respect.

“We respect them and they respect us,” Colorado forward and former King Steven Reinprecht said.

Added Colorado defenseman Darius Kasparaitis: “We know that playing the Kings is going to be a tough first-round matchup. Being in the Western Conference, where all of the teams [finished the season] so very tight, we know all of the teams in the playoffs are good. It was going to be a battle no matter who we played.”

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Murray is still looking for consistency from left wing Jaroslav Bednar, but the rookie was in the lineup Thursday night, making his playoff debut.

“We’re kind of saying, ‘Just do it on a regular basis for us,’ because we could see in training camp the ability he had,” Murray said. “I remember when we got Jason Allison and he was kind of asking me about some of our players and he said, ‘Who is this Bednar?’ And I said, ‘We’re not completely sure right now who he is, but at times we think he’s like [Alexei] Kovalev from Pittsburgh.’

“He’s scored four goals this year [in 22 games] and three of them have been highlight goals.... He’s a top-end skill player. You watch him do things in practice and [you say to yourself], ‘Wow.’ He’s one of those guys who can wow you with some of the things he does. You’d just like to be wowed a little bit more often.”

Murray would also like to see more fire from the Czech.

“I asked him, ‘Are you ready to play in the playoffs?’” Murray said. “He said, ‘I hope so.’ And I said, ‘Are you ready to play in the playoffs?’ He said, ‘I hope so.’ I said, ‘Are you ready to play in the playoffs?’ He said, ‘I’m ready to play.’”

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Murray, downplaying the Kings’ 4-5-2 record in the last three weeks of the regular season: “We won four of our last seven games. We went 4-2-1, and if we do that this round, we’ll move on to play somebody else. If you go back 10 games, it doesn’t look quite as good, but I’m just looking at the last seven.”

Staff writers Jerry Crowe and Lonnie White contributed to this report.