Not so happy birthday Quick

It was a lackluster game from the very beginning. It began with coincidental minors (Vincent Lecavalier for hooking and Nino Niederreiter for embellishment. Say what you will about embellishment – can one really have committed a penalty against one who was embellishing? – it saved the Kings from a penalty kill so I’ll take it.) The Kings had some great chances except that no-one seemed to be shooting the puck, just passing from great front of net positions. The Wild had their best chance of the period when Quick tried to play the puck behind the net, got stuck on his butt unable to return to the front of the net, and the puck ended up behind it. Of course it was no goal because the puck came in from behind and underneath; still, a strange sequence of events.

The Kings continued to make the Wild look much better than they perhaps are (their power play coming into this game was 1-for-32 over 16 games, 0-24 over the last 11, and had lost the last 5 games in regulation.) At 1:38 Dustin Brown was called for cross checking (not sure that was deserved. Tanner Pearson’s high stick at 7:20 of the first period was certainly deserved. Perhaps not intentional but deserved.) at 3:12 Zach Parise finagled a shot past Quick and any chemistry the Kings had (it wasn’t much) fizzled out of the building. At one point Dustin Brown lost his stick (he wouldn’t be the first King that evening to lose his stick at a crucial moment) and tried clearing the defensive zone with his hands, but when he couldn’t it seemed none of his teammates could help him out either.

At 19:46 the Wild thought it’d be nice to close out the period with another goal. Charlie Coyle got the breakaway and snapped it past Quick; Darryl Sutter used his coaches challenge to claim the goal was offsides but the video replay showed the puck and skate crossing the blue line almost simultaneously and it was decided that it wasn’t clear enough to overturn the call on the ice. Ironically enough, the first goal actually was offsides, but the offside happened maybe 30 seconds before the goal and the refs didn’t notice.

The Wild really sealed the deal at 5:04 of the second period, when instead of potentially halving the lead on a power play, the Kings allowed a shorthanded 2-on-1 breakaway. Mikko Koivu streamed down the left side of the ice, Quick moved to defend that side of the net, but instead of shooting Koivu passed to Erik Haula who had basically an empty net to shoot into. Not even Chris Sutter on the dance cam could bring life back into the game. The Kings lacked chemistry, discipline and good shooting. They did outhit the Wild but that was it. The Kings scoring chances were low; the Wild logged 21 blocked shots because the Kings kept shooting directly into their sticks it seemed. They play Arizona in Arizona on Saturday; may this game serve as a wake up call.

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