Comfort of the Road Beckons

The Kings open the post-Olympic portion of their season with five of their first seven games on the road, starting Tuesday night at Columbus, Ohio.

For the Kings, that’s good news.

They have been tremendous on the road, earning points in nine of their last 10 games away from Staples Center and posting an 11-2-2-1 record on the road since Dec. 8, when they lost to the St. Louis Blues, 2-0.

Only the Philadelphia Flyers, Detroit Red Wings and New York Islanders have accumulated more points on the road than the Kings, who are 14-9-4-2 away from home and have outscored their opponents, 82-72.

The Kings, who have scored on only 15.6% of their power-play opportunities at Staples Center, have converted a league-leading 25% on the road.

“Some of it’s just keeping it simple,” defenseman Mathieu Schneider said. “I think on the road we tend to just shoot the puck to the net and crash the net, get the rebounds. At home, we tend to make more plays, get more fancy.

“It’s a cliche in hockey, but teams talk about playing a road game, which is really a simple game. At home, sometimes you’re excited, you’re trying to impress your fans. You want to make that little extra fancy play.

“At this level, it doesn’t work. There are too many good players here and simple is often better. And it’s easy to play simple on the road.”

Captain Mattias Norstrom echoed Schneider’s remarks.

“Sometimes, less is more,” he said, “and that seems to be our approach on the road--that we don’t have to overpass, we don’t have to do anything extra or fancy to win the game. We do it through blue collar--just work hard.”

Of the Kings’ remaining 24 games, 12 are on the road.