Road Gang

Alongside their laptops and Zagat guides, the Kings made sure to include family photos when they packed their bags this week.

They’ll live out of their suitcases for most of the next month.

Aboard a Sky King charter out of Los Angeles International Airport on Tuesday morning, they embarked on one of the most demanding stretches in franchise history, a 31-day adventure that will allow them only three full nights in their own beds.

“It’s the trip from, I don’t know where you’d want to call it from,” Coach Andy Murray said. “I don’t know if there’s ever been a tougher trip in NHL history.”

Actually, it’s two trips that kind of run together into a marathon.

It starts tonight at Joe Louis Arena against the defending Stanley Cup champion Detroit Red Wings, the opener of a five-game trip that also will take the Kings to New York, Columbus, Ohio, and Atlanta before ending Oct. 31 at Chicago.

From Chicago on Halloween night, they’ll arrive home in the wee hours of Nov. 1, about 40 hours before they’re scheduled to play the first of two games in three nights at Staples Center on Nov. 2.

After the second game, Nov. 4 against the Minnesota Wild, they’ll head back out on the road, boarding a late-night flight to San Jose, where they’ll play the Sharks on Nov. 5 to open an eight-game trip, their longest in 18 years.

They’ll arrive home from that one -- after stops in Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, St. Paul and St. Louis -- in the early hours of Nov. 22.

All told, that’s 15 games in 14 cities, including the two-game stopover in Los Angeles, and 14 flights covering nearly 15,000 miles. Add to that some two dozen bus trips, among them a late-night, 100-mile ride from Ottawa that will drop them in Montreal about 16 hours before they play the Canadiens.

“It’s crummy scheduling,” defenseman Mathieu Schneider said.

It could be a lot worse. The Kings, whose longest trip was nine games, used to make trips like these on commercial flights. These days, they charter everywhere, often busing right onto the tarmac and spending precious little time in airports. They travel aboard jets equipped with nothing but first-class seating.

Some things, however, haven’t changed: They usually make four or five trips into the Eastern time zone each season, typically playing no more than five or six games; they prefer to make one Eastern trip, usually the longest, early on.

Like all NHL teams, the Kings are required to submit a minimum 56 potential dates for their 41 home games, “and we normally do not submit a lot of dates early in the season,” General Manager Dave Taylor said.

Their reasoning: They draw better at home later in the season; they like to get the most difficult trip out of the way while they’re still fresh; and they believe a long journey early in the season brings the team closer together.

Further complicating matters this year: The WTA Championships will be played Nov. 6-11 at Staples Center, eliminating six potential home dates.

Still, the Kings were surprised to see two long trips almost strung together. They pleaded for mercy from the NHL after seeing an early draft of the schedule, but the one change that was made actually made things worse, Taylor said.

Instead of opening the second trip at Denver on Nov. 6, which would have given them an extra day to recover from their Nov. 4 game and left them with a shorter flight into Ottawa for their next game, they play at San Jose on Nov. 5.

The Kings also objected to crisscrossing the continent on the second trip, which will take them as far east as Montreal, then all the way back to Vancouver before they turn around again and wind up in the Midwest.

But what’s done is done. The Kings hope to make the best of it.

Like the toddlers many of them will leave behind, Schneider said, “our main focus is on eating, sleeping and playing” over the next four weeks.

Murray, who once organized a team curling tournament in Calgary, has a few ideas on how to relieve the tedium. A basketball tournament has been discussed, and he has tentatively scheduled a practice at Shattuck-St. Mary’s Academy in Faribault, Minn., the prep school where he coached before joining the Kings.

“It’s fun just to put smiles on people’s faces,” the coach said. “Obviously, it becomes more significant depending on how you’re doing. If you’re doing really well, you probably don’t need to do anything.”

The activities that most effectively bind the team, he said, are not the ones suggested by the coach but those initiated by the players.

“Most of the guys have young families,” said team captain Mattias Norstrom, who probably will organize a team dinner, “so we don’t have a chance to do any of that when we’re home. This is a great time to get everybody together, maybe sit at a table with some guys you usually don’t go out to eat with.”

Trips like these, Schneider suggested, can’t help but unite the players. All but a small number have roommates on the road.

“It’s nothing that needs to be forced,” he said. “On the road you’re living together, basically -- eating together, back to the hotel at the same time, a lot of hours on the plane together. It just comes naturally.”

The hardest part, Norstrom said, is leaving family behind.

“Playing a lot of games in a limited number of days, I love that,” the veteran defenseman said. “I don’t mind the travel. I think that’s part of the trial of playing in the NHL. It’s not only how you play when you’re well rested; it’s how you perform when you’re tired and a little banged up.

“But my daughter’s 18 months old, and so many things are happening at this age. The rest of it, I’m looking forward to it.”