Anze Kopitar – Faxes from Uncle Dale

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Game #78 – Hawks vs. Kings Q&A: All The Kings Men

By Sam Fels March 30, 2019 977 0

Jesse Cohen runs the “All The Kings Men” podcast, and you can follow him @KingsMenPodcast.

Much like the Hawks, how do the Kings rebuild with this much bad money around? They can’t buy out everyone, and they can’t trade most of it either.

I’m not sure there’s much the Kings can do but hope the contracts aren’t as bad as they seem. I don’t think there’s going to be a ton of interest in most of the players deemed to have “bad” contracts. Dustin Brown was considered one of the worst contracts for a few seasons but rebounded nicely.

Let’s say they have…. 9 “bad” contracts? (oh god it hurt to write that): Kopitar, Brown, Kovalchuk, Carter, Toffoli, Doughty, Martinez, Phaneuf, Quick

I could see a scenario where they buy out one (Phaneuf), trade 1 or 2 (Quick/Kovalchuk), get moderate on ice value for three (Kopitar/Doughty/Brown… don’t fight me on this one), get reasonable on ice value for 2 (Toffoli/Martinez).

BUT it’s a lot of “ifs”

Is there anyone under 30 on this roster worth caring about?

Under 30? Like presently in a Kings uniform? I think Carl Grundstrom has some interesting potential as a second liner? There are some decent role players but anybody like an Elias Petterson? No.

Are we far away from Jonathan Quick ceding the starter’s role to Jack Campbell or someone else?

The Quick issue comes down to other teams interest. If someone out there is willing to pay what the Kings want my guess is they’ll have no problem turning the net over to Cal Petersen if there aren’t any takers then I think we’re all Ride or Die for Jonathan Quick

Would Jack Hughes solve all the problems here?

Jack Hughes MIGHT solve ONE problem. Whoever they draft in the first round is for the future not the present. Whether or not that would go any distance towards solving other problems… well… I kinda doubt it but I’m a pessimist.

*Smash cut to Jack Hughes lifting the Stanley Cup in LA next year as I am proven an idiot once more.*

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Game #65 – Hawks vs. Kings Preview, Demo Ski Rental – Modern Day Catastrophists

By Matt McClure March 2, 2019 1224 0

at

RECORDS: Hawks 27-28-9 Kings 23-33-8

PUCK DROP: 3:00PM CST
TV/RADIO: NBC Sports Chicago, NHL Network, WGN-AM 720
PLEASE NO MORE CALIFORNIA SONGS: JFTC

How the mighty have fallen. It’s a cliche, but given the matchup between these two former titans, it’s applicable. And while the Hawks are threatening to make a useless playoff appearance this year as the Kings did the previous season, the opponent they find for themselves today has no such delusions of grandeur.

At the start of today’s games, the Kings find themselves with the second worst point total in the league, and dead last in the Western Conference, with only the fetid corpse of the Ottawa Senators providing the buffer between them and the dirt. The problems for this team has remained constant even coming from the salad days, where their team offense is 30th in the league, but only this time there hasn’t been any defense and goaltending to bail them out. Age and workload and everything else has caught up with Jonathan Quick, whose .891 overall save percentage (.905 at evens) wouldn’t even be good enough on a team that boasted some high octane offense on occasion, and he need look no further than the squad in white today as proof of that. Quick is now 33, and his contract will take him until he’s 37, so if this is the rate of decline that Rob Blake and the Kings are going to have to live with, it’s not going to get any better anytime soon. But rest assured, despite Rob Blake not being able to make a solid transaction to save his life, much like he couldn’t ably perform any of his other post playing career duties, he’ll somehow manage to get promoted to executive VP or some shit, because that’s just what happens to Rob Blake.

In front of Quick the Kings’ blue line is still anchored by accused rapist Drew Doughty, whose play has also completely fallen off the table. While he’s still taking assignments in any and every situation as a true #1, he has not been able to flip the ice this season as in years past, and only has one goal all year for his troubles. The latter is a bit of bad luck, and now with longtime partner Jake Muzzin gone he’s dragging around Derek Forbort, but if this is the new standard with his new contract kicking in at $11 mildo per NEXT year for the maximum 8 year term, the Kings are going to have to hope he rebounds at 30, and again, ask the guy wearing the XXXXXXL #7 sweater on the other bench how well that works out. With this season lost, the Kings are not at least trying to get a look at whatever they’ve got in their barren prospect cupboard, particularly with Alec Martinez hurt, so people named Kurtis MacDermid, Sean Walker, and Matt Roy are rounding out the bottom two pairings along with the overrated corpse of Dion Phaneuf.

Up front, Anze Kopitar hasn’t been able to repeat his career year which saw him gain a Hart Trophy finalist nod primarily because no one else on the Kings was scoring last year. Well now Kopitar has backslid to what his usual numbers had been, but no one else on the Kings has picked up any of the slack. Yes, it’s completely shocking that a 36 year old Ilya Kovalchuk has been a giant floaty turd on a team going nowhere, and he also has four more years left on his deal. No one on the Kings has more than 20 goals, which is probably most shocking from Jeff Carter, but again, the miles have more than likely caught up with him. Kyle Clifford and Trevor Lewis are still here, and it’d be easy to point and laugh about being permanently attached to 4th liners, but Marcus Kruger is still getting paid fairly nicely on the other side.

As for the Men of Four Feathers, this is an absolute must-have game in regulation if they’re going to continue to delude themselves and everyone else that they’re still vying for a playoff spot. The Nuclear Option of Saad, Toews, and Garbage Dick returns with The Drake now concussed, making the Hawks’ forward group even more top heavy. But again, if they’re going to do this, it’s not going to be because John Hayden and Wide Dick Artie are going to start dominating from the third line. And given that there’s no fathomable combination of defensive pairings that are going to slow anyone down, even this Nerf gun Kings offense, there’s no reason not to lean on the proven weapons they’ve got. Any run is also going to require solid goaltending from the likely still dizzy Corey Crawford, who in all likelihood will go tomorrow night in Silicon Valley, leaving Cam Ward to hopefully not shit his pants this afternoon. It’s a big ask, but he provides veteran leadership and and big game experience so hopefully he’s up for it.

When these two played at the UC back in November the Hawks were just getting acclimated to Coach Rod Belding and the game was an unwatchable slog. According to Stan Bowman, the team is still learning his system, which apparently must be like learning Sanskrit given the on ice results in the defensive zone. While the Hawks have at least become some form of black comedic fun since then, the vultures have continued to pick at the Kings, but afternoon hockey is the great equalizer and almost always results in shitty play and shitty ice conditions, so expect the same this afternoon. Regardless of that, if this team wants to convince itself it should be playing past game 82, beating the worst team in the West is nothing short of mandatory. Let’s go Hawks.

Game #65 Preview Suite

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Game #65 – Hawks vs. Kings Spotlight: Anze Showing The Way…Yet Again

By Sam Fels March 2, 2019 975 0

It will be impossible, and it should be. to unlink the careers of Anze Kopitar and Jonathan Toews. Kopitar came into the league one year earlier, and is one year older, but both were among the best two-way centers in the game. Both anchored two of the pillar teams in the NHL for the decade, and of course there were the two playoff series between the two for Western Conference dominance. Both have similar type games, not exactly excelling in one area but showing just below excellence in pretty much every facet. If either were excellent at anything, it was in their own end and their control of play, setting the stage for perhaps more talented teammates to do their thing.

Both had dips in their careers at the same point. Both signed huge contracts that now their fanbases bemoan and outsiders mock. And both are probably now being improperly viewed by their own teams.

Last year, at this exact point in fact (the Hawks visited the Staples Center in Game #65 last year as well), we showed the differences between Toews and Kopitar at that point. Kopitar was having a bounce-back year, which would end with his first Selke Trophy, and Toews was in the midst of something of a nightmare that had some questioning his place within the team’s future. We concluded that really, there wasn’t much difference between the two and that Kopitar was seeing the opposite side of that fickle coin known as “luck,” while Toews was still getting an unwanted view of its less generous side.

Now, the tables have turned, and they haven’t. Toews and Kopitar continue to dovetail with each other, but both have flipped their perspective on that uncaring and yet vital coin.

Toews, in some ways, is having a career renaissance. Kopitar is in the middle of a perfectly functional season, with 47 points in 63 games, playing amongst true trash. Both have seen a decline in their defensive game, though that could probably be pinned partially on the ineptitude of those around them. That’s a stiff argument to construct though, as both are right around their team-rates for any metric you want to use. This after careers soaring above those rates. No man escapes time.

The difference this year, as it was last year, is one of them is just getting more pucks to go in than the other. Except this time it’s the one in red and not the one in black benefitting. It was Kopitar last year who saw his shooting-percentage rise to 17.5%, while Toews was hearing the NBA Jam guy screaming, “CAN’T BUY A BUCKET!” all season at 9.5%. This year Toews is at 16.6%, while Kopitar has sunk back to a certainly acceptable 14.8%.

Like Kopitar last year, Toews has seen a surge in power play points to cover some of his now not-dominant even-strength work, with 31 points already. Kopitar had 42 PP points last year, with just 13 this year. Toews had 12 last year. They can’t get away from each other.

But more to the point, Kopitar’s totals and rates are probably what a team could expect from him and Toews more than Toews’s production this year. Toews is unlikely to rack up this shooting-percentage again, as the chances and attempts he’s getting don’t really stand out from the previous years. And the power play is unlikely to sizzle like this again, or at least for this long.

And what that is is solid #2 center production. To expect Toews or Kopitar to keep providing #1 production into their 30s is not quite pie-in-the-sky stuff, but it’s not far either. Only one center seems to be managing that and that’s Sidney Crosby, who is made of something else. The Hawks seem to be trying to make up for that with a cheaper option in Dylan Strome. The Kings very well may have Jack Hughes to take that responsibility. But both should recognize what they have, not what they wish to have.

The problem for the Hawks is that Strome will only be cheap for one more season, and is still a longshot to be much more than a high-end #2 if everything works out. The Kings might lose out in the lottery, and then what? With the way the league is shaping up going forward, teams will need a center capable of 85-90 points or more. Toews and Kopitar have spiked that recently, but you wouldn’t bet on them doing so again. So how do you find that when those two are taking that kind of money down? Whichever answers first are probably better set up to get back to where they once belonged.

Game #65 Preview Suite

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Game #65 – Hawks vs. Kings Q&A: Est Disparu?

By Sam Fels March 2, 2019 1432 0

This keeps happening. Our normal Kings guy has disappeared, though we guess we can understand not wanting to talk about the Kings when you don’t have to. So here’s a link to a Lisa Dillman Q&A on The Athletic that should leave you where you need to be.

Lisa Dillman Q&A

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Game #65 – Hawks vs. Kings Douchebag Du Jour: The Whining Fanbase You Never Hear About

By Sam Fels March 2, 2019 1140 0

When it comes to fanbases you identify as whiners or complainers, you usually think of Toronto and their self-flagellation. Or it used to be Detroit and how no one worshipped them to the degree they thought was reasonable (something around Egyptian king/Commodus level). Or Montreal and their need for past and meaningless glories to still be revered today.

You don’t think of Los Angeles, which only makes them bitch and moan more. You’re better off not paying attention.

A couple years ago, Kings fan kept wailing so loudly and so consistently that no one gave Drew Doughty a fair shake that voters gave him Erik Karlsson’s Norris just to get them to shut up. Last year, Kings fans used Anze Kopitar’s 92 points as a reason to announce that he should be given the award for best defensive forward, one that he hadn’t really deserved to be credited for in three or four years. Past injustices were brought up of course as an excuse to mewl even louder, and again Kopitar was given the award to get the reward of silence.

Kings fans main complaint is that no one stays up late enough to watch their games. Which ignores the fact that no one is going to stay up to watch games that are boring as shit, which the Kings have been for at least five seasons. People stay up to watch the Sharks, you’ll notice. Kings fans have tried to tell everyone that they’re actually big and rugged and that you should appreciate that they are the only ones playing hockey the “old way.” That’s a cover for being slow and dumb and bad, a main reason they suck, and also a ruse to keep you from realizing their games would constitute a war crime.

Sadly, their two Cups (that are getting pretty distant in the mirror now) gave Kings fans a platform, when before even they knew that no one should care about them. Thankfully, due to their incompetent management, bad contracts, and inflexible roster, they’ll be heading back to the black hole of obscurity before too long. Assuming they don’t get the #1 pick. If they do, they’ll start the whining about how Hughes isn’t getting Calder consideration thanks to being on the West Coast the day after the draft.

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Game #20 – Kings vs. Hawks Preview: A Chilling Vision

By Sam Fels November 16, 2018 1602 0

vs.

RECORDS: Kings 5-11-1 Hawks 7-8-4

PUCK DROP: 7:30

TV: NBCSN Chicago

NO MORE CALIFORNIA SONGS: Jewels From The Crown

It’s ok if you mourn the end of the Hawks Era. It can be a tough watch at times, especially when the memories of what a fine, oiled machine it was still so fresh. No team ever exits the spotlight gracefully, or at least it’s pretty damn rare. The fall is always painful. Especially in the callous world of the salary capped NHL, the tumble comes quick and the tide always wins. Maybe it was an impossible task set ahead of the Hawks, even without the mistakes they’ve made.

Then again, they could be the Kings.

It’s an interesting record. Since the Hawks last Cup win, they have three playoff wins. The Kings have one in the four seasons since their last win. They’ve missed the playoffs twice. And whereas the Hawks have tried to dance around their rebuild or collapse, the Kings have fallen face-first into theirs this year. Those days of Kobe and Kershaw wearing Kings’ jerseys are over, because this is a mess only identifiable by dental records. And given that it’s a hockey team, even that’s dicey.

They may provide a lesson in what happens when you cling too tightly to things that have past. The Kings for too long still tried to be a roving horde of barbarians that they thought won them two Cups, and watched as their team got slower and dumber while the league got faster and more skilled. Seriously, this outfit traded for Milan Lucic once. Firing the GM and coach is nice and all, but not if you’re not going to try anything new.

They also bought into fortune-stained results as reality far too much. Last year’s playoff berth was simply due to a magnificent Jonathan Quick season, which is not the norm or anything you should count on, and Anze Kopitar and Dustin Brown shooting the lights out. No matter how much their fans bitched and whines that Kopitar should have been the MVP simply because no one stays up late enough to watch their dog-assed team, he was never likely to replicate that. And if he didn’t, he wasn’t taking Brown with him either. That’s what’s happened.

Jeff Carter is 33 now and looking it. Ilya Kovalchuk‘s style of impersonating waiting for a bus until a pass comes was never going to improve the team much, and it hasn’t. Beyond whatever this top-six is, and that’s clearly still very much a mystery, there’s simply nothing on the bottom-six. It’s more of the Kyle Clifford–Trevor Lewis Axis Of Yuck that it’s seemingly been forever.

The real treat is at the back of course, where Drew Doughty got his money and seemingly doesn’t care anymore. He’s playing with something called Derek Forbort, not that it matters. Alec Martinez and Jake Muzzin are starting to look like the remnants of that Big Mac you left on the coffee table at 3am last night and discovered this morning while guzzling gatorade. Dion Phaneuf is even more of a monolith than he was, which shouldn’t be possible but hey, L.A. is the land of fantasy and dreams!

Quick isn’t around to bail this out, which he’s only capable of once every four or five years. He’s out for a while. So is his backup Jack Campbell, which means they’ve brought Statler and Waldorf in to play goalie.

Robb Lake the GM seemingly has recognized all he’s built here is kindling (too soon?), and the sell-off might already be under way. This week he sent Tanner Pearson to Pittsburgh for Carl Hagelin, with Hagelin a free agent after the season. Whatever isn’t battened down should probably be sold at auction, so Muzzin, Martinez, Forbort, and Toffoli could and should be on notice. They’re the only ones whose contracts aren’t an atrocity.

For the Hawks, Marcus Kruger returns to the lineup after Brandon Davidson was informed that he’s hurt, replacing Dream Warrior on IR. SuckBag Johnson will sit. Alex Fortin remains out in favor of John Hayden. Sure. Corey Crawford will attempt to ride the momentum of Wednesday’s shutout, and against this decidedly broken squirt-gun of an offense you’d think that wouldn’t be too hard.

I don’t want to put too much on the Hawks, but there’s really no excuse to not get a regulation win tonight. The Kings are already getting the white flag out of the closet if not waving it already. They’re on their third-string goalie, maybe fourth. They’re slow and dumb, and the Hawks have done all right with the rare slow and dumb opponent you see in the NHL these days. As long as you don’t do anything too stupid, the Kings can’t really find a way to score enough to beat you. Don’t make this any harder than it has to be.

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Game #20 – Kings vs. Hawks Spotlight: Those Who Do Not Learn…Go To The Kings Front Office

By Sam Fels November 16, 2018 1352 0

Let us take you back to the spring of 2014. It’s not a happy trip for those of us around here, but it’s necessary. The Kings and Blackhawks played perhaps the best playoff series since The Great ’05 Lockout. The Kings come out on top by a pubic hair. They go on to destroy the Rangers for their second Cup in three years.

You might think they would have taken a close look at how they did that. You might think they’d want to keep replicating what they actually did on the ice, not what they did in between their own ears. You’d be wrong. The Kings beat the Hawks that spring by playing the Hawks’ game better than the Hawks. They were fast. They were dynamic. They scored a ton. They simply overpowered the Hawks on most nights of that series. Corey Crawford was helpless (so was Jonathan Quick, to be fair) to do anything about it. You may not see a series of that raw power again…until the Jets-Sharks West Final this spring, obvi.

We can demonstrate it better. They averaged 2.78 xGF/60 in that playoff run of ’14. That was a boost from 2.37 from the regular season. They averaged more attempts and shots, as well. Anze Kopitar, Jeff Carter, Tyler Toffoli, Marian Gaborik, et all were skating everywhere.

They haven’t been above that 2.37 mark in the four seasons since. First Darryl Sutter, and then John Stevens returned the Kings to their plodding, simplistic ways that their players hated. And in a league that gets faster and faster, the Kings are getting left behind.

Check out some of the acquisitions since that Cup win, both from Dean Lombardi and Rob Blake (or Robb Lake, if you prefer): Milan Lucic, Vinny Lecavalier, Kris Versteeg, Luke Schenn, bringing back Rob Scuderi, Dion Phaneuf, Nic Dowd, Jarome Iginla, Devin Setoguchi, and an aging Ilya Kovalchuk. What about any of these names suggest faster and skilled? Or even smarter? The Kings seem to be playing a game that’s from 2002.

Moreover, since the 2011 draft, here are the NHLers the Kings have produced: Andy Andreoff, Nick Shore, Colin Miller, Tanner Pearson, Paul LaDue, Adrian Kempe, and that’s it. Say what you want about where the Hawks are now, but they’ve produced actual prospects. They’ve traded most of them, but at least they exist.

The Kings mistake was falling in love with the idea of what people thought the Kings were. They won the ’12 Cup on the back of Jonathan Quick with a heavy roster. It also didn’t hurt that the entire Western Conference that year took a step back. The Hawks were still reloading, the Sharks fell off their peak, the Canucks were a paper tiger beating up on a horrid division, and the Wings were done. It was ripe for the Kings to run through, which they did.

They fell in love with this image of an atom-smashing, meat-off-the-bone, thundering herd of a team that hockey media was only too happy to play up. But they were only that once. 2013 saw them get rolled by the Hawks in the Conference Final, and realize they couldn’t be viking warriors if they were going to win. They set out to be the Hawks. And they did it. And then for some reason, forgot all about it.

And now they’re on the precipice of a great fall. Not only is their window shut, there isn’t a path to open a new one. Kyle Clague won’t by himself. By the time they can summon another good team, Kopitar and Doughty will be well into their 30s. Carter already is. How do you extricate yourself from this? Being so bad that Kopitar and Doughty ask out? Who wants those contracts? The Kings dinner for the next 10 years is going to be a lot of salary for players moved elsewhere.

But banners hang forever. It’s a trade most fanbases would make. Perhaps all. The crash doesn’t have to be so hard, though.

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