The Force Not With the Kings

Star Wars Night at Staples Center may have brought cute memes of baby Yoda, but alas not a stellar game from the Kings. With practically identical stats all around, from save percentage to special teams to faceoff percentage, I expected a pretty even game from the Kings/Preds matchup. But given that their goals per game was 3.41 going in to the Kings 2.6 and Roman Josi has way more points lately than any Kings player, I had predicted that’d be the difference. Damn I hate being right sometimes.

It did start pretty even. Shots were the same, play moved smoothly through the neutral zone from goalie to goalie, but the Kings lack of finish looked like it could become a problem. Michael Amadio in particular seemed to be scared to make a mistake, like he feels he doesn’t belong in the big club, and has no idea what to do when he does get the puck on his stick. When they did have a power play advantage they had so many turnovers the Preds seemed to have more chances than they did. It became clear the Kings were just out of sync. Passes weren’t connecting. Pucks weren’t getting to Rinne. And the Preds forecheck was making them look like fools. Even the addition of no longer injured Alec Martinez wasn’t serving to cheer anyone up. (I don’t know why I was thrilled.) Eventually the Preds broke through, earning Josi his first assist of the evening and a sad look from Campbell as he slowly realized the puck wasn’t between his legs as he had thought. The Kings looked even more lost than before, failing to record even a shot on goal for almost 5 minutes. Wagner took a delay of game penalty and I wanted to slap him silly. Thankfully for the Kings they evened up players as the Preds took a penalty in the middle of their power play, but the Kings still looked lost out there. With 44 seconds remaining in the first and even more confusion in front of the net, Josi earned his second assist of the evening and groans from the crowd. A Kyle Clifford fight immediately following did serve to stir up something, but whether that would carry into the second remained to be seen.

As it started with a penalty kill thanks to a weak call on Frk, probably not well? The Preds kept wracking up the shots, outshooting the Kings 11-23 in a complete reversal of the Kings usual style. It didn’t help them – quantity over quality has always bee their mentality. Even a Kings power play looked to be to the Preds advantage, until Tyler Toffoli managed to turn a shorthanded chance for them into a well placed pass (finally! A well placed pass!) onto Alex Iafallo’s stick found the back of the net. What’s that, a second period goal? Craziness! This was a completely backwards game in so many ways. They battled through another weak penalty (thankfully the Kings penalty killing was 5 for 5) and kept things even, if not somewhat dull for the second. But once the third came, the Kings slumped again. They gave up goal number 3 halfway through the period but it was really a long time coming. They were sloppy again, missing connections again, and giving the Preds far too much room. 1:09 later goal number 4, and Campbell was looking shaky at best. Then came a series of penalties that saw everything break down – first the Kings, then the Kings again giving the Preds a 5-on-3 for 40 seconds (another delay of game, get yourselves together boys!), but then with 13 seconds left of that, the Preds took a penalty – it was chaos, but not in a way that helped the Kings. They were lucky when the clock finally ran down. “It can be humbling,” Coach McLellan said, “and it’s not fun to get humbled – but maybe we need it.”