from Amalie Benjamin of the Boston Globe,

So, he was sent to Los Angeles, where he has been playing with Anze Kopitar and Marian Gaborik. And, after feeling like he was “overthinking” in his first preseason game with his new team, Lucic said his plan needed to be to “trust yourself and play within your strengths and go out there and do what you do and not focus too much on overanalyzing the X’s and O’s to where you’re overthinking things.”

Lucic didn’t have to think in Boston. He knew what to do and where to be. He doesn’t know that in Los Angeles. And there are other things he also doesn’t know as the regular season approaches.

Lucic is in the final year of his contract, with a $6 million cap hit. The Kings are said to be open to inking Lucic to a new deal, but he needs to prove he can get back to his play of 2010-11, when he scored 30 goals and 32 assists as the Bruins won the Stanley Cup.

“Another thing that I have to learn how to deal with, too, is that little bit of uncertainty,” he said. I’ve always known that, ‘Hey, OK, I’m going to be here [in Boston] and the contract is there,’ so none of that was ever in the back of your mind, right? So I guess there is a little bit of uncertainty there, as well.

“Usually when the team has success, individuals have success, so I’m just trying to come here and help the team win hockey games, and usually when you do that everything else takes care of itself.”

Maybe, it was suggested, he’ll be back in the Eastern Conference next season, seeing his former teammates more than twice a year. He laughed.

“We’ll see,” he said. “In a perfect world I’d love to stay out here. It’s awesome.”

more on Lucic...