At the end of the weekend, the Los Angeles Kings had more players on their roster than the Los Angeles Dodgers do at a comparable time of the regular season. The total was 30.

	When Jason Allison is in the lineup, he's more than a point-a-game player.

"Actually," coach Andy Murray added, correcting himself, "it's 31. Pardon me."

It isn't easy keeping up.

That figure, of course, includes the ranks of the injured, and the way things have been going for the Kings, it wouldn't have been shocking to hear later that another Los Angeles skater suffered a broken ankle stepping off the bus at the airport after Los Angeles' 6-1 loss to the Colorado Avalanche on Sunday night.

Every team goes through injury sieges, and when most coaches say they're not going to use injuries as an excuse, that's a warning that they're about to do exactly that. But this latest Los Angeles run on the training room, the injured list, and the roster of the AHL's powerful Manchester Monarchs truly is extraordinary.

"You know, it's part of the game," Murray said. "You don't focus on the players you don't have. You worry about the players you do have, and try to get them to play as well as they can."

As the week started, the Kings were without Jason Allison (sore right knee), Adam Deadmarsh (dizziness and equilibrium problems), Aaron Miller (broken foot), Eric Belanger (back strain), Erik Rasmussen (back strain), Steve Heinze (concussion), Alexander Frolov (facial laceration), and Ken Belanger (concussion). Allison's and Deadmarsh's absences this season have meant that the Kings' top line -- those two plus Ziggy Palffy -- has been intact for only eight games.

So Kings goalie Felix Potvin had a lot of unfamiliar faces around him as the New Year approached -- including recent Manchester callups Steve Kelly, Jared Aulin, Kip Brennan and Jerred Smithson.

After the decisive defeat at Colorado gave the Kings four straight road losses, and left them at least temporarily in the Western Conference's No. 9 slot, Potvin said he hadn't been a part of an injury streak "as bad as this. There's nothing you can do about it. You have to go out there and battle hard and try to get points. This conference is so tight, you can't give up points."

Veteran defenseman Mathieu Schneider said he hadn't experienced "anything even close to this. We're doing what we can. It's just a matter of staying in the hunt right now until we get everyone healthy."

More significant than short-term effects for the Kings is the issue of whether Allison troublesome knee will give him problems all season. The gritty Allison seems to have been allowed to come back too soon from his early season knee injury. After suffering a torn MCL, He missed 15 games before returning against Nashville on Dec. 5, but he lasted only nine games in the lineup before a knee sprain sidelined him again. He is expected to be back at some point this week, but the bigger issue is whether this will be an intermittent, or worse, season-long problem.

"He was advised by the doctors that he was able to come back," Murray said. "We knew that this might happen, that he might need to take some time off again."

And Deadmarsh?

"We approach it with the idea that he'll be back for the next game all the time," Murray said. "You're always concerned."

	“	He was advised by the doctors that he was able to come back. We knew that this might happen, that he might need to take some time off again.”
		— Kings coach Andy Murray on Jason Allison

Miller had come into his own as an upper-echelon, major-ice-time defenseman, but his season has been disastrous, starting with the sports hernia that kept him out of the first 13 games of the season, and then the fractured foot.

The Kings are even being careful with the diagnostic labels, saying that Deadmarsh, Ken Belanger, and Heinze all are out with "concussion-like symptoms." For the most part, Deadmarsh has been resilient during his career, but his concussion problems began in earnest after he took a punch in a fight with Vancouver's Ed Jovanovski in a Nov. 1, 2000, game.

Deadmarsh missed 14 games, and eventually challenged Jovanovski to a cathartic rematch. Now, although the Kings officially are stopping short of declaring this another battle with a concussion, Deadmarsh's history raises the possibility that he will be playing on borrowed time even after he returns to the lineup. There isn't a bigger-hearted player in the league, and Deadmarsh plays the sort of gritty power forward game that makes him seem bigger than he is -- 6-foot and 195 pounds. He skated with the Kings, without contact, last week.

"No one's quite sure what happens when players get concussions now," said Schneider. "There's a lot more attention given to them. He's had his share throughout his career. I think everybody's worried about Adam right now. He has three or four good days, and then a bad day. It's frustrating to see a guy who's so competitive have something like this hampering him. The way he plays the game every night, he's even more susceptible to it.

"And Alli? That's something that's going to get better. It's going to take time. When you have this many guys out of the lineup, it's not easy to give him that time. I think he rushed back a little too much. It's a tough call, but in the long run he's going to be fine."

With Allison and Deadmarsh, the Kings will be serious threats in the Western Conference. Without them? The Manchester Monarchs' season will last longer.

Terry Frei is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. His book, "Horns, Hogs, and Nixon Coming," was released this month by Simon and Schuster. On Friday, Jan. 10, at 7 p.m., he will be signing copies of the book at Borders, 10720 Preston Road, in Dallas.