The Ducks have been pretty busy since the start of the National Hockey League season. So they welcome a few days when they aren't.
Sunday's 3-1 loss to Florida was the team's 17th game -- tied with the New York Rangers for the most in the league, four more than seven other Western Conference teams and five more than the league's least active team, the Montreal Canadiens. They'll now get their first prolonged break since the season began Oct. 9; they don't play again until Friday, when they host Nashville.
And so, even in the wake of back-to-back losses -- the Ducks were beaten 5-2 by Dallas on Friday -- coach Randy Carlyle didn't hesitate to give his players two full days off.
"It's the first chance we've had in a long time to have a two-day break," said Carlyle, "So as tough as it is to give, I think that it's really just giving an extra day, because normally we would have a day off.
"We feel at this time it's important for them to get their rest, get their heads free of hockey for 48 hours, clean the garage and kiss their wife."
The players happily accepted that opportunity.
"It's huge," said forward Ryan Getzlaf, who enters the respite in a third-place tie in the league scoring race with 19 points. "We've got to use these four days properly. We're getting an opportunity where we can get a little rest and then get going again. ... The amount of games we've played the last little while, we've done a pretty good job thus far of taking our schedule and working with it."
Now, says goalie Jean-Sebastien Giguere, the team needs to take advantage of the breather.
"We have to look ourselves in the mirror and see what we can improve on," said Giguere. "Everybody has something to improve and work on, and this is a good week to take a step back and go back to work rested. ...
"It's going to be nice to rest for a couple days -- just take a step back from hockey, enjoy your time with your family and don't even think about the game for a couple days. And come Wednesday, come ready, mentally and physically. We're going to have two practices before the next game, and they're going to be important practices."
Incidentally, the Ducks had just two four-day breaks between games last season. They won both games after those breaks: 2-1 at Edmonton on Dec. 27, and 3-1 vs. Calgary on Feb. 29.
Much needed: The Kings had been playing reasonably well, but had little to show for it.
So last week's 3-1 win over Florida -- ending a five-game losing streak and the first of consecutive wins going into tonight's game with Dallas at Staples Center -- probably had a bit more significance than the average early-November victory, at least in the mind of coach Terry Murray.
"Very important," said Murray. "(For) confidence, for the growth of the team, for them to believe real strongly in what it is we're doing."
A young team that's losing, he said, can "start to have a little doubt in 'Are we doing the right thing?'
"The only way they can evaluate their performance, because of their youth, is their own point statistics or a team win. If you come away at the end of the night and nothing has happened on the goals and assists, or we've lost, then you start to get afraid or nervous for the young guys, that they might lose their confidence. And then you're going to have to take some drastic measures, maybe taking them out of the lineup. And that's the last thing you want to do with young players."
One of those young players -- 18-year-old defenseman Drew Doughty -- agreed the win was much needed.
"We were a little frustrated losing those other games," he said. "We were losing them by one goal and stuff, and we were right there to win 'em. So tonight we came out hard and we took every opportunity. One of our main focuses was to get shots on net, and we did that, and the pucks were going in for us."
Games people play: The dressing room at the Kings' El Segundo practice facility has a new feature this year: A ping-pong table, which gets a good workout before and after practices.
Jarrett Stoll, who joined the team in the trade that sent Lubomir Visnovsky to Edmonton, was one of the players who lobbied for the table, along with Michal Handzus.
"We had it in Edmonton and had a lot of fun with it there," said Stoll, "and I think you do something or watch something together as a team, and it just gets you going a little bit before practice, and for some guys, it warms some guys up. Raitis (Ivanans), he sweats pretty good during the matches, so he gets going.
Yeah, me and Zus had kind of talked about, and a couple of other guys. I think Zus went to Dean (Lombardi, the general manager) and asked if it would be all right, and then Terry, and obviously it went through. So it's a good addition for sure. ...
"You get doubles going, you get teams going, and rankings and what not. And it's fun. It's fun to keep track, it's fun to jab guys here and there. It's just something that gets guys together a little bit."
Top players, he said, are Anze Kopitar, Ivanans and Derek Armstrong, with Doughty making inroads: "He's come out of the woodwork and he's one of the top-ranked players now."