Top 10 Los Angeles Kings Playoff Series Part II

2 – 2012 Stanley Cup Final – “The First Cup” – Los Angeles Kings vs New Jersey Devils

I might get some flack here by making this series number 2 on my list even though it was the first Stanley Cup championship victory for the Kings in their long-suffering 45 year history but bare with me on this one.  Think back to when you experienced your first crush or your first kiss. Or the first time you met your best friend, drove your first car or had your first date with a current loved one.  To most people those precious memories are cherished forever and for good reason, but it doesn’t mean they were or still are the best experience in the overall view of your life thus far.  Since that time (if you are old enough) you have probably had even far better and richer experiences in life! Sure there is nothing quite like your first time experience of anything but that’s nostalgia for you and nostalgia is an expert at sugar-coating any memory in anyone’s life.  It doesn’t make it any less special or important, I’m just saying that it gets done better later on. Simply put, this Stanley Cup victory and experience was obviously beautiful and wonderful and proved to us long time suffering LA Kings fans that dreams do indeed come true.  Our first Stanley Cup victory should be cherished and remembered fondly just like your first crush or kiss would but when we put nostalgia to the side and view this with a wider and more focused lens, the Kings just did it better and more “epic-lly” the second time around.

Now I’m not knocking this series, far from it.  I love this series! We finally won the Stanley Cup and it is the greatest sports fan experience I ever had in my life and was one that I was starting to think I was never going to witness and experience in my lifetime. I’ve seen my Toronto Blue Jays win back to back World Series and my beloved Manchester United and Los Angeles Lakers win everything imaginable when it comes their sport’s championships but the Stanley Cup is the one I loved and coveted with obsession the most.  Whether it’s the size or unique eye-catching shape of it, the century plus worth of history it contains and has been a part of, the hardships and glory that many teams and players went through to be able to hold it and the have their names carved onto it’s shiny body forever and the names of those teams and players that never did or came close, the Stanley Cup is the holy grail of sports.  And it made me physically ill to know that the name of the Los Angeles Kings, my favorite team in my favorite sport, wasn’t anywhere to be seen on that cherished trophy of champions.  There’s a saying up here in Canada about that.  It goes, “If it’s not on the Cup, then it doesn’t truly exist.” That is a harsh but somewhat realistic saying that haunted me and I’m sure a lot of you for most of our Kings loving lives (So yeah, the San Jose Sharks and Vancouver Canucks don’t actually exist, so there!).

So in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final and with the Kings ahead 6-1 in the game and 3-2 in the series, when the time clock and the excited and energetic Staples Center crowd counted down the seconds that were left in the game, it finally hit me that this was actually going to happen. After an entire Cup run that lasted 2 full months of agonizing, sleep preventing and anxiety filled dread that this was simply too good to be true, a feeling of relief and then euphoria came over me strongly like I have never felt before when it came to sports. The Los Angeles Kings, my beloved Los Angeles Kings, your beloved Los Angeles Kings were finally crowned as the Stanley Cup Champions!  And when the keepers of the Cup brought out the majestic and mythic prize, I fell to my knees and cried my eyes out, hugging all of the Kings jerseys that I had ever owned since I was a child (and there is a lot of them) and I’m not ashamed to admit it. In fact when I saw Dustin Brown lift up the Stanley Cup high above his head, I lost my mind and started parading my street in celebration like a mad man waving my Kings jerseys around.  Remember that it was a Tuesday night and over here the whole neighborhood was sleeping because it was almost midnight but I didn’t care.  A long time of dream of mine had finally came true.

The stress was now gone.  The fatigue of staying up late (remember I live in the eastern time zone) for 2 months straight (without missing a day of work by the way) was gone, both replaced with shock and awe of what just occurred.  All that was left was an overwhelming abundance of emotions that uncontrollably poured out from deep inside me.  I thought about all the times that I had dreamt that the Kings had finally won the Cup and the happiness and relief I felt only for it to fade away when I woke up to the heartbreaking feelings of reality, remembering that it never had actually happened … until it actually did happen at the end of this series on June 11th, 2012, a day before my birthday (Best. Birthday. Gift. Ever!)  That recurring nightmare was over forever but I do still have dreams to this very day but of the exact opposite scenario.  I now sometimes dream that Kings had NEVER won the Cup and the Cup wins of reality were actually just dreams.  Strange but I found any easy way to counter that new dilemma.  I purposely placed a framed 2012 Stanley Cup team photo right by my bedside so now it’s the first thing I see when I wake up after having one of those nightmares to remind myself that it DID indeed happen.  I added a second framed Stanley Cup winning team photo right beside it in 2014 just to be safe.

Looking back now to that long-awaited Stanley Cup victory in 2012 from today’s viewing glass and revisiting that entire Cup run, I smile and chuckle to what I and many other Kings fans were suffering at that time and had been suffering for a very long time.  We were suffering from condition I call L.T.K.F.S. or otherwise known as “Long Time Kings Fan Syndrome.”  It’s a painful and pessimistic condition due to being trained (or brainwashed) to think that the worst is going to happen to our team because the worst always did happen when it came to our Los Angeles Kings.  From the lack of any success for the first 15 seasons of the club’s existence to never being able to make it past the second round including the years of the “Miracle of Manchester,” “Gretzky’s revenge” and the “Frenzy on Figueroa.” Or the fact that we lived through and experienced an era of LA Kings hockey that had Hockey Hall of Famers and legends such as Wayne Gretzky, Luc Robitaille, Jari Kurri and Rob Blake, only to witness these same legends never to be able to win and lift the Stanley Cup as Los Angeles Kings players (and of course in a cruel twist, these same legends either had already won or would go on to win the Stanley Cup as players for other teams). When they finally did take the LA Kings to the Stanley Cup Final in 1993, a Marty McSorley illegal stick randomly showed up out of nowhere in game 2 and for whatever reason that only the Hockey God scriptwriters can explain, changed the course of that game and then the series as the Kings lost their Cup opportunity in 5 games, 3 of those in overtime.  Oh yeah and right after that they couldn’t make the playoffs for years and when they finally did, they either got swept or lost to Rob Blake’s new team.  The cruelty just went on and on and on. It seemed like every time the Kings had a solid opportunity to finally do some special, it would only end very badly and in some epic horrible and heartbreaking way too. So who could blame those of us that still had doubts about that 2012 Cup run as it happened.

As hard as it was, I personally tried to not allow myself to feel anything or have any hope of finally winning the Stanley Cup because deep down I feared that it would only end up in another disappointing heartbreak, as it always had in the past.  Of course that was easier said then done as another part of me wanted to grab on to that hope and believe that this could possibly be it but the force of the pessimism in someone with L.T.K.F.S. was strong.  It was an internal conflict that was nauseating.  Even when the Kings made it to the Conference Final against the Phoenix Coyotes, as excited as I was or wanted to be, my nerves were even stronger and I waited for the bottom to drop or some illegal stick or giant collapse to happen.  Thankfully it never did.

In reality, we had nothing to worry about because the Los Angeles Kings ended up obliterating every obstacle that was in their destructive path!  They ended up going straight to the Stanley Cup with a 16-4 playoff record and the only team that gave them a little bit of a push back of adversity was in the 2 games that the New Jersey Devils won in the final.  Besides that, there was no adversity at all.  Witnessing the Kings like this with my own eyes was very alien to me. I wasn’t used to the boys having everything under control, especially in some very tight games.

The Kings didn’t just win the Stanley Cup either, that alone is an amazing achievement on its own but they made history as well!  They were the first 8th seeded in history to win the Stanley Cup! They were the first team ever to defeat the 1st, 2nd and 3rd seeded teams in their conference and then go on to win the Cup!!  THEY BECAME THE FIRST TEAM IN HISTORY TO GO 3-0 IN ALL FOUR OF THEIR PLAYOFF ROUND SERIES!!! (WHHHHHAAATTTT!?!?!?!)

And what about the personal redemption stories of some of the players?  Dustin Brown was heavily bullied by teammate Sean Avery because of his lisp and Avery’s distaste for Brown’s girlfriend (and now wife) Nicole was made very clear to everyone in the locker room.  Now Dustin Brown is the Stanley Cup winning Captain of the Los Angeles Kings (and would later become the first American Captain in NHL history to lead a team to 2 Stanley Cup victories) and where is Avery now? At home washing his tights!  How about Dean Lombardi? He was fired as the GM of the San Jose Sharks and suffered depression because of it but then came to Los Angeles and built a monster of a winner (twice!) literally from scratch!  Darryl Sutter was the GM of Calgary but was banished to his farm to shovel manure (which he probably still does in the off-season because dammit, that man loves his farm!), his career as a coach or GM in the NHL appeared to be over but then he got a call from Lombardi and went on to become the first Sutter family member to win the Stanley Cup in 29 years!  WHAT ABOUT THE STORY OF JEFF CARTER AND MIKE RICHARDS AFTER THEY GOT EXILED FROM PHILADELPHIA AND FROM EACH OTHER, ONLY TO FIND EACH OTHER AGAIN IN LOS ANGELES AND WIN THE CUP TOGETHER OR THE INCREDIBLE SPEECH JUSTIN WILLIAMS SAID TO THE TEAM BEFORE GAME 6 STARTED?!?! DO I EVEN HAVE TO MENTION DUSTIN PENNER’S STORY!?!?!  THE PERSONAL BEHIND THE SCENES STORIES OF REDEMPTION FOR THIS TEAM AND ITS FAN BASE FROM THIS SERIES WIN AND CUP JOURNEY IS ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE!!!!

So yeah, this Cup series win was kind of a big deal and should be remembered forever until the end of time.  These Kings were very dominant and that should be the preferred course any fan would want.  It’s definitely a lot easier on the nerves but where is the fun in that??? Like the memories of our first kiss, or first date or first whatever, the first Stanley Cup win will always be special but like I said, the Kings ended up doing it better … and more “epic-lly” in just 2 short years later!!!