Kings Ready to Make Noise

We’ll try to ignore the wine and surfboards.

The Kings have played with so much heart, committed to such serious hockey that we’ll allow them those California distractions.

Check out the cuts, bruises and red marks. And that’s just on the coach.

Notice their record in the last 45 games: 27-10-6-2.

Listen to the whispers going around that no one wants to face them in the playoffs.

Hear newcomer Cliff Ronning’s impression of the team, one that hasn’t changed one bit since he joined the Kings in a trade last weekend.

“They play with a lot of intensity and they come to play,” Ronning said. “It’s good to be on a team that has that intensity.”

It’s about the production of top players Jason Allison, Ziggy Palffy and Adam Deadmarsh. It’s about the effort of the Brad Chartrand-Mikko Eloranta-Ian Laperriere line.

It could be as simple as a meal. The players take turns buying lunch, then sit around and eat together.

Coach Andy Murray believes this helps team unity.

They took a rare break from the action after practice Wednesday to autograph items for charity, and they received bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay for their efforts.

They also had a chance to buy special surfboards that featured the King logo and will be autographed by the players.

So the Kings will be well prepared for a quiet evening at home or a day at the beach.

Not that they can expect much of either the rest of the way.

Consider their next three games at Staples Center.

There’s a showdown with Colorado tonight, and a victory would let the Kings give serious thought to snatching the second-best record in the Western Conference from the Avalanche.

Saturday’s game against San Jose could be a showdown for first place in the Pacific Division. Then again, by the time they return from a four-game trip, their April 2 game against Vancouver could be a fight for the eighth and final playoff spot.

The Kings seem to be better when there’s so much at stake.

“It’s easier to play games like that than it is when you’re at game 41,” Laperriere said. “It’s pressure. It’s good pressure. It’s coming from the locker room. Guys want to make the playoffs, you’ve got to do well. It’s not pressure from the newspaper or pressure from the coaches. It’s good pressure.”

And it’s old hat. Last year, on the verge of missing the playoffs, the Kings went 11-2-5-2 in their last 20 games. That set up all the great moments last spring, when they beat the Detroit Red Wings and engaged the Avalanche in a seven-game fight.

That all came into play at the beginning of the season, when the Kings lost 13 of their first 19 games and looked ready to drop out of playoff consideration by Thanksgiving.

So the Kings drew on their own experience.

“They say that looking back should give you the ability to look ahead,” Murray said.

“We had to look back. We did it. That should show us we have the ability to do it again.”

On Nov. 17, the day they lost at Detroit and Murray called their effort “an insult to every parent that’s ever taken their kid to play in a hockey game at 5:30 in the morning, like their parents did for them”, he also talked about the effort it would take to make the playoffs.

“We wrote on the board the number of wins we were going to have to have and the winning percentage,” Murray said. “They were a lot. We said we would have to have 93 points. You would say, ‘Jeez, those numbers are tough.’

“The fact that there was the run at the end of last year, it allowed our guys to look ahead, because we were able to look back.”

At that point, he had said enough.

He didn’t talk to the team before its game the next day at Minnesota. He let the captains handle that.

They fought back from a deficit to tie the Wild that night. They slowly got the season turned around.

The players haven’t used any excuses. They’ve fought through injuries to Deadmarsh and Palffy.

And those two Olympians, who could have slowed down after the Winter Games, have been even stronger after they got back from Salt Lake City.

Deadmarsh has eight goals and seven assists in the 11 games since the Olympics. Palffy has five goals and eight assists in that stretch.

“To come back from an exciting tournament, like I was fortunate to be a part of, I was really looking forward to coming back and going on a good run with our team,” Deadmarsh said. “We’ve had a lot of fun so far.”

While the Olympians were having fun, Murray survived a faceoff with death in a single-vehicle accident in Wisconsin.

It’s still chilling to hear him describe with vivid detail how his truck swerved on the ice and tumbled down a hill.

But it’s encouraging to see him on skates--earlier than he was supposed to--and directing practice from the ice.

“It’s tough to sit and watch these practices,” Murray said. “I think you can coach better when you’re going through the practices with the guys.”

Nobody on this team is giving up. For the second year in a row, neither did the front office.

Last year, General Manager Dave Taylor hung in long enough to get a good return for the inevitable departure of Rob Blake, who would have left as a free agent if the Kings hadn’t traded him for Deadmarsh and Aaron Miller, along with picks and prospects.

This year Taylor brought in Ronning for the stretch drive.

Laperriere is quick to credit strength and conditioning coaches Joeseph Horrigan and Dave Good, who design half-hour after-practice programs for the players.

That comes in addition to Murray’s tough practices.

“We go hard here,” Allison said. “A lot of high-tempo stuff.”

It’s no accident the Kings are tough at the end of games, tough at the end of the season and looking ready to extend the season even longer.

The Kings need six victories in their final 13 games to reach Murray’s number of 93 points.

Right now, they look much better than a .500 team.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at [email protected].