Murray Has Seen Worse

It has been a grind, no question, but the Kings’ eight-game, 17-day trip, which wraps up Thursday night at St. Louis, is far from the most grueling Coach Andy Murray has experienced.

“This one doesn’t even compare to the national team trips,” said Murray, who coached Team Canada from 1996-98. “Those were unbelievable.”

On a 1997 trip, Murray said, he brought the Canadians to Warsaw for their first visit in 20 years. After a 10-hour flight from Calgary to Frankfurt, Germany, a three-hour layover and a 90-minute flight to Warsaw, they boarded a bus.

“It was right out of the 1940s,” Murray said. “The driver, who didn’t speak English, had maybe two teeth, and there were beer bottles on the dash.”

Worse still, the bus wasn’t big enough to fit the team and its equipment comfortably, so the players and coaches had to sit on their luggage. Then came the bad news: They weren’t making a short trip to a hotel; the game had been rescheduled for a smaller city about eight hours away.

A snowstorm en route stretched the trip to more than 10 hours.

“I used to tell the guys all the time about the power of flexing,” Murray said. “If you can’t do anything about something, don’t worry about it; just flex and roll with it. We were about six hours into that bus ride and one of the players yelled from the back, ‘Coach, I’ve had about all the flexing I can handle for one day.’ ”

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Lubomir Visnovsky sat out Tuesday night’s game because of back spasms. “It’s unfortunate,” Murray said. “He’s been our best defenseman.” ... Chris McAlpine replaced Visnovsky and Mikko Eloranta, activated from injured reserve after sitting out five games because of a sprained left knee, replaced Jaroslav Bednar.