Oh Dear Kings

It’s not easy to be a Kings fan right now. They just get harder and harder to watch. Last game, it took over 10 minutes to get a shot in the first period, seventh in the second and almost five in the third. The Leafs brought even more trouble for the Kings offense, holding them spotless for 9:12 and scoring twice in the first five minutes. Both on/following power plays. Both slashing minors. In the defensive zone because they could NOT get past the neutral zone if they got it out of their defensive zone at all. Brown took the first trip to the box, 1:15 and poor Peter Budaj didn’t stand a chance. 2:42 in there was a Tavares goal under his legs and that was that. They already had 6 shots on goal, so pretty much one every 22 seconds and the Kings were about to tee them up with a second power play (because they clearly needed more of an advantage) 1:33 later. Pearson, who I mentioned as needing some help this season, wasn’t about to make his case, as the second goal came soon after how PK ended and the Kings were still gassed. By then they’d accumulated 3 more shots to the Kings – you guessed it – still 0. Clifford tallied the first shot, a lackluster one at best. Followed by a power play at 9:26 that was just as lackluster and proved that Desjardins will need to do *a lot* of work on it. (He started work on it earlier in the morning. It hasn’t paid off yet.) for a while, the Leafs were Tripling the Kings shots. TRIPLING. (Seriously what team am I even watch g right now?!) I watched us go from 3-10 to 4-12, to 5-15 to – wait, was that a King’s goal?? Not the prettiest, it scuttled underneath their netminder almost as an afterthought, but it counted! (And it’s one more goal than last game!) Hey Kempe, look what you can do when you’re not in the box? To say the period ended 2-1 is, bivouacs by now I hope, not reflective of play. The Kings ended up with ANOTHER stick penalty, this time from Carter, in the last few minutes, until the horn miraculously blew. By this point the Kings had at least caught up in shots – the Leafs were only doubling them now! (I’m varying laughing right now. Mostly crying.)

Then, things got worse. Yeah. WORSE. It’s possible. It began at 1:15 in when goal number three made it past Budaj. 4:33 in was Budaj’s last look at the game when goal number four snapped past him. Welcome to the NHL Cal Peterson, here’s a double minor from Alex Iafallo. (I mean… Come on here boys, I get that you’re probably deflated and feeling thoroughly beat already, but this is his FIRST NHL GAME help a boy out!) and did I meant ion it was a HIGH STICKING call? Control. Your. Sticks. NOW. Of course, they scored with 20 seconds left on the first penalty so we had to suffer through 2 more shorthanded minutes. And it put their power play percentage at 60. What even is that? Even a Kings power play couldn’t rouse anything. Muzzin did singlehandedly take out both Leafs players who had a two-on-one, so that was something impressive. But that was the only high point. Literally, the only redeeming thing to come from the second period. At almost every pony they were doubling our shots. Continuously, throughout the whole prior, for every shot we had, they’d take two. Oh no there’s still 20 more minutes of this!? The horror!

Thank God there was no more bleeding in the third. The Kings didn’t start to play well or anything, but they didn’t fail miserably. There was another slashing penalty because they couldn’t control their sticks to save their lives, but that was the only thing of note. Players skated around the ice in a haphazard fashion and skated their way into the last place. Again. Still. Granted the Kings were probably always going to lose this game, the Leafs are very good, but not that badly and not in that way. There are just so many things to fix their game it’s going to take a HUGE shift to do so. And they already changed their coach. Who’s next?