"I guess the pressure was off," the veteran head coach reasoned, with a wry chuckle, "because we couldn't finish 31st, so at worst we were going to live up to what everybody thought would happen."

"We just took the mindset that we were going to take it one game at a time," Murray said. "We weren't going to set a point total objective. We were going to try and get two points out of every game and that's what we've done. If we lost the first 81 games we had to have a reason to play the 82nd game."

"Our goalie started making saves," blurted Murray, before the question could be finished. "It's as simple as that. We're not working any harder. I don't know if we're playing any better than we were in the first half, when it was tough to get wins. We're probably just better because your goaltender allows us to."