Kings on Road to Easy Street

When most teams hit the road, the road hits back.

Not the Kings.

Not in the last two months.

Continuing their exemplary road work Wednesday night, the Kings got 20 saves from Felix Potvin and goals from Philippe Boucher and Nelson Emerson in a 2-0 victory over the Minnesota Wild before 18,658 in the Xcel Energy Center.

During a 17-5-3 surge that has taken them from six games below .500 on the morning of Dec. 9 to six games above .500 heading into the All-Star break today, the Kings are 11-2-2 on the road. And with a 14-9-4-1 record outside of Staples Center, they have earned more points on the road than any other team in the NHL.

Their latest victory gave them an 11-3 record in January, including a 7-1 mark on the road, setting a club record for victories in a month.

They earned their three-day break--they’ll reconvene for practice Sunday in El Segundo before playing the Philadelphia Flyers on Monday night at Staples Center--by matching an 11-year-old club record for points in a month.

So, will a hiatus halt their run?

Or will it revitalize them?

“I think right now is a good time to take a break,” said defenseman Mattias Norstrom after the Kings had completed their first 22-point month since a Wayne Gretzky-led team went 10-2-2 in February 1991. “It’s great that we’re rolling, but I think right now for everybody in this league it’s a good time for a break.”

Said Potvin: “I think everybody’s going to come back fresher. We had a [two-day] break at Christmas and we came back and had this [record-setting] month. So, hopefully, we can recharge and do it again.”

The Kings had lost at Montreal in the last game before their Christmas break, and Coach Andy Murray made a point of reminding them early Wednesday.

“We let two points slip away on us late in that game,” Murray said he told his players before the game. “That shouldn’t have happened. The break starts tomorrow. Tonight, we’ve got to work and battle a hard-working team.”

Duly advised, the Kings bottled up the slumping Wild from the start, beating Coach Jacques Lemaire’s second-year expansion team for the second time in six days and extending its winless streak to six games.

The shutout was the Kings’ fourth of the month, Potvin’s third.

“I think the bottom line is, when our team plays that well, we make the goaltender’s job a little bit easier,” Murray said. “Certainly, our goaltenders have been good. And we’ve been good for our goalies.”

After a scoreless first period, Boucher gave the Kings the lead with a power-play goal at 8:07 of the second period, taking a pretty pass from Emerson and rifling a shot from the left faceoff circle past goaltender Dwayne Roloson.

Emerson, who contemplated retirement last fall while he sat out 22 games because of a concussion, scored his second goal in five games with 11:50 to play, a long tip-in giving the veteran winger his first multiple point game of the season.

“He’s showing lots of jump right now,” Murray said. “When you come as close as he did with that concussion to not knowing where things are at in your career, you get that real passion for the game, and he’s always been a real passionate player. I think he’s really showing that right now.”

Said Emerson: “You sit and kind of take everything in, put everything in perspective [when you’re 34 and sidelined for a long period]. It gives you a little sense of where you’re at when you come back, for sure.”

High in the slot, Emerson tipped in a shot from the left point by rookie Andreas Lilja. Lilja’s assist, after Boucher’s goal, was the second point of the game for the King defense, the league’s highest-scoring blue-line corps with 110 points.

“We talk about the need for our defensemen to get involved in the play because in this league now, you need your defensemen to be involved in the offense if you’re going to score,” Murray said. “We work in practice on that all the time. Probably no more than any other team, but for whatever reason, it seems to work for us.”