Why Claiming 2014 Didn’t Help The Kings In 2016

By Emily Redenbach
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Updated: April 29, 2016

Well, it’s been a week Kings fans, and perhaps the elimination of our biggest rivals the Ducks and the Hawks has weakened the sting of being eliminated ourselves. Unavoidable that the Sharks and their Beat LA chant remains, but perhaps we can count on the Predators to help us out there. When the Kings failed to take the Conference (which was a distinct possibility when they clinched almost three weeks before the playoffs even began) their options were going to be the Sharks or the Predators, as the Wild had clinched the 7th spot. When they failed to take the division many Kings fans were relieved, as it meant instead of the somewhat dangerous (as the Ducks found out!) Predators we would again match up with the San Jose Sharks. I myself was happy with the match up, as we’ve beaten them many times before. Indeed in 2014 we thoroughly embarrassed them when we became the fourth team in NHL history to come back from a 3-0 deficit and win the series. And, like many others, including it seemed the LA Kings, I believed this was enough to propel this team into the second round almost easily. But this was not the Kings team from 2014. And this was not the Sharks team from 2014 either. So what went wrong?

Personnel.

No, I’m not going to start bashing our players because most of them played well, but they weren’t the strong defensive core that they were in 2012 and 2014. For a team that prides itself on its defensive strength – the Kings are undoubtedly a defensively structured team – indeed a team that came 3rd in the Jennings Trophy race behind the Washington Capitals and Anaheim Ducks, came up short. I’m not going to fault Drew Doughty, whom some have said should have been better as he was on the ice for so many goals against, did everything Darryl Sutter asked of him. He was on the ice for so many because he barely left the ice. His defensive partners, however, left something to be desired. Since 2014 the Kings have lost much of their defensive prowess, when Willie Mitchell left for Florida, Robyn Regehr retired, Slava Voynov chose to leave the country (before he could be deported), and the loss of Alec Martinez to injury during game 1 of the series didn’t help. (He was injured in the regular season and perhaps returned too early.) Even the loss of Justin Williams hurt the team defensively (and in so many other ways, Williams we miss you so much.) Doughty took up much of the slack, but you can’t build a Stanley Cup winning team with Doughty and no one else. Jonathan Quick wasn’t up to his Conn Smythe standards; not to say he was the problem – he in fact made some spectacular saves, but he didn’t make them enough. And the defense in front of him wasn’t as sharp as they needed to be. Rob Scuderi, who knows Sutter well and knows the Kings system well, came back experienced but slow. Luke Schenn made some egregious errors that lead directly to goals. In fact he made me cringe every time he stepped on the ice for fear of what mistake he was going to make this shift. Brayden McNabb has potential but he showed how green he was in playoff situations. Jamie McBain played incredibly well his first game but Darryl Sutter doesn’t trust him. (Even though he should.) He was benched practically the whole of game three (which yes I know the Kings won but that wasn’t because McBain didn’t play.) This all caused an uneven amount of time for Doughty and the Sharks knew it. They took advantage, and it almost looked easy.

Penalties.

In game one they took 4, but it was four huge players the Kings rely on during both penalty kills and power plays – Anze Kopitar, Vincent Lecavalier, Jake Muzzin and Doughty. In game 2 the Kings took 3 regular penalties and one 5-on-3 for 2 full minutes. That one killed the Kings chances pretty definitively. In game 3 they took 6, game 4 there were 4, and in game 5 miraculously only 3. But those three were timely; the first two took place early in the first period, and created 1:44 of a 5-on-3 penalty kill. And the final was with 3:34 remaining, losing any chance the Kings had to mount a last-minute comeback. It was difficult enough for the Kings to generate any offense – in game one and game three they had 3 shots on goal the entire third period. In game 2 they had 7 in the first, 9 in the second, and 7 in the third. I’ve seen the Kings get that many shots off in not much more than one period. In game 5, the game they needed to win and could have going into the third period, the Kings only got off 5 shots on goal in that final 20 minutes. The Kings are a team who rely on taking quantity not quality when it comes to shots. So spending so much time in the penalty box just destroyed them. They spent too much time on the defensive and the Sharks power play took full advantage. Not only were the Kings spending an extraordinary amount of minutes in their own zone but the Sharks power play, which was 3rd in the league during the regular season, scored on 5 of those opportunities. To give some perspective, the Kings gave up 5 goals in 5 games. In 2012 when they won the Cup playing only 20 games to do it, they gave up 6 power play goals the entire run. Now you can blame the refs here, and certainly a lot of the refereeing was questionable. But killing a 5 on 3 is possible, the Kings have done it quite a bit. And a good team should be able to rise above things like that, keep their composure, and stick to good hockey no matter what situation they’re given. The Kings didn’t keep their composure. They didn’t hunker down, kill the penalties then come right back with a vengeance.

First shots.

The Kings had the lead in this series for 4 minutes. That’s it. In 303:47, the Kings held the lead for 3:32 minutes early in game 1, then again for a whopping 30 seconds when Trevor Lewis scored shorthanded and the Kings let the Sharks get the goal right back on that pesky power play. In game 2 Joe Pavelski scored 3:37 into the contest. Game 3 Joe Thornton scored 30 seconds in on the first shot of the game. Game 4 Brent Burns scored 2:09, unsurprisingly on the power play. And in game 5 Joonas Donskoi scored on what was essentially their first shot 1:08 into the first. Yes the Kings are the comeback Kings, held the record in the regular season for most wins when going into the third period trailing, but this is the playoffs and playing from behind practically every minute of every game will not get you past the first round.

You can’t flick the switch.

The Kings have never been a regular season team. They’ve won their division once in 1992-1993 when it was the Smythe division and that’s it. They’ve never won the Conference let alone the Presidents Trophy. But ask the Ducks, who’ve won our division 4 times in the last 4 years and have yet to make it to even the Stanley Cup Final round, let alone win the Cup in that span. The regular season isn’t the same. And the Kings are quite notorious for doing well when they need to. In 2012 they were the 8th seed and beat the President’s Trophy winners the Vancouver Canucks. In 2014 they didn’t have home ice until the final round and yet still won 3 game 7’s away. But this season the Kings basically stopped playing once they clinched their playoff spot. They played huge teams such as the Dallas Stars, eventual Western Conference winners, the Washington Capitals, the clear Presidents’ Trophy winners, and the defending Stanley Cup Champions the Chicago Blackhawks – and won. After that they were the second team to clinch and lost 12 of the next 16 games. They went back to some dangerous habits I’d hoped they left behind after the first few weeks of the season (notably penalties and letting in dumb goals, playing down to opponents.) And going into the playoffs the Kings just couldn’t get back up to the standard they needed to be at. You can’t just step up because it’s the playoffs when bad habits have been setting in for the past month or so. Playing well isn’t just a switch that you flip.

Offense.

The Kings just didn’t have the chemistry they have when they’re successful. That 70’s Line, which had been the pride of offense so many times in recent seasons, was nowhere. Tyler Toffoli had one assist the entire series. One, in game 5. Anze Kopitar, who just negotiated a $10 million contract, was hardly the Selke Trophy candidate caliber he needed to be. Milan Lucic, who bounced around different lines, didn’t score a goal either, and the Kings gave up Martin Jones for him. Jones didn’t have to make anywhere near the amount of saves nor the quality of shots Quick was looking at, but giving him up to Boston only to see him traded 2 days later to the Sharks was a huge blow for the Kings. The guys the Kings rely on just weren’t producing goals. Trevor Lewis scored the most impressive goal of the season, in a stunning shorthanded bid that showed patience and finesse. I don’t want to discount Lewis at all, who is voted consistently the most underrated player, but if he’s stepping up like that, where was everyone else?

These aren’t the 2014 Kings. And the Sharks weren’t the 2014 Sharks. They learned from their disappointment and stepped up, eager to show us the same courtesy we showed them. (Which wasn’t much.) Perhaps the Kings deserved to lose this series. Certainly watching them it was clear they just didn’t have that x-factor they had last time. In fact the Sharks capitalized on every weakness and could easily have dispatched the Kings in 4. It was clear going into game 5 that this would be the last game I’d be watching this season, even before the puck dropped. It was clear halfway through game 2 it wasn’t going to last much more than 5. But these things are fixable. Where do the Kings go from here to regain their dynasty? Jeff Duarte has his thoughts on that coming up.

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