Murray Likes Effort, but Not the Result

By mid-morning Sunday, King Coach Andy Murray had already watched the videotape of Saturday night’s 1-0 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning twice.

“Territorially and chance-wise,” he said of the defeat that dropped the struggling Kings to 1-3-1 overall and 0-2-1 at Staples Center, “we dominated the game, probably more than any other game this year.

“But we just did not finish our chances. ... We need to score goals with the opportunities we’re getting. The game should have been decided after 40 minutes and it wasn’t. It should have been clearly decided, but they hung in there and they got the one great opportunity and they scored on our mistake.”

Ian Laperriere’s turnover at the King blue line on the first shift of the third period led to the game’s only goal. Vaclav Prospal, skating through the right faceoff circle, took a pass from Fredrik Modin and lifted a shot over Felix Potvin.

Potvin made 18 saves in what Murray said was perhaps his best game of the season, but again the King goaltender was outplayed.

Kevin Weekes, the Lightning’s backup goaltender, stopped 31 shots.

“We’ve run into some good goaltending,” Murray said, “but I’d like to think it’s our team that’s making the other goalies look good. If we have the chances we have [been getting], we should score.”

*

Mattias Norstrom, who did not return to Saturday’s game after suffering a rib injury in the first period, is “somewhat questionable” for Tuesday night’s game against the Washington Capitals at Staples Center, Murray said.

Still, tests conducted Sunday on the King captain revealed that the injury “wasn’t as bad as we anticipated,” the coach said. Norstrom’s streak of 169 consecutive games is longest among the Kings.

Rookie defenseman Andreas Lilja, on loan to the Kings’ American Hockey League team at Manhester, N.H., for conditioning purposes, suffered a knee injury in Saturday’s game at Norfolk, Va., and flew back to Los Angeles on Sunday.

“It’s not good, from what I understand,” Murray said, “but they have to do some testing [today].”