Anger Doesn’t Manage Anything for the Kings

The pile of bodies behind the net at game’s end Friday might as well have carried a sign: Sean Avery was here.

Although a game misconduct and unsportsmanlike penalty with 8:18 left meant that Avery was not around to see the final minutes of the Kings’ 5-1 loss to Ottawa -- he was on the bus outside the Corel Center when the game ended -- he was again at the center of chaos.

This might have been a teaser for tonight’s visit to Montreal, where Avery’s September comment about French Canadian players has not been forgotten.

But the Kings’ third consecutive loss, and fourth in five games, was also a painful lesson in why the Senators have a league-leading 40 points. Dany Heatley scored twice and Dominik Hasek looked every bit the Vezina Trophy winner that he has been six times.

All that was tabled for discussion when the coaches, the Kings’ Andy Murray and Ottawa’s Bryan Murray, ended the evening talking more about each other than the game, primarily focusing on the two fights that Ottawa players started as payback for Hasek’s being hit during the game, mostly after a King player was pushed into him.

The game slid into hockey’s version of wild west “justice” after the Kings’ Craig Conroy was pushed from behind by Ottawa’s Chris Kelly and hit Hasek in the head with his skate with eight minutes left. Then the last five minutes devolved into 48 minutes of penalties.

“That’s what Andy does, they run the goaltender,” said Bryan Murray, the former Mighty Duck coach and general manager. “Pretty much every time we played them in Anaheim, it ended up like this.”

Another Murray, another view.

“We both have reputations,” Andy Murray said. “We know [Bryan] sends players out like that because he has a reputation as a tough coach.

“So, he’s sitting up there on his lofty perch, saying all this stuff about me. The problem is, if you’re up there, you can’t have it both ways. You don’t preach one thing and then go out and do something else.”

The he-said, he-said spat spilled outside the locker rooms, when Bryan Murray chased down and screamed at Jim Fox, a Kings’ television commentator, because of on-air remarks by Fox that Murray was “unprofessional” and had a “reputation” for these kind of incidents.

Kelly escalated the situation, going after Jeff Cowan with 3:29 left. Then, eight seconds after play resumed, the Senators’ Zdeno Chara jumped Tim Gleason.

Chara received an instigator penalty, which under NHL rules should result in a one-game suspension and a $10,000 fine for Murray, although the NHL didn’t apply the late-game instigator rule recently when it involved Phoenix Coach Wayne Gretzky.

Avery, though, was blamed by Bryan Murray for starting the trouble.

“He’s never been much of a factor other than what he does,” Bryan Murray said. “He speared Hasek in the crease. He talks to players [on the ice] all the time. He’s the leader of the band there.”