Everything Else

Game #20 – Kings vs. Hawks Q&A: Out Of The Darkness…More Darkness

By Sam Fels 1697 0

We really have to reach into the depths for our Kings Q&A. It’s best if you don’t know. Just know that he’s truly warped. 

Boy, your lot really sucks, huh?

Last Saturday, Sportsnet flashed a graphic that the five leading scorers on the Flames had more goals than the Kings have scored all season. In the two games since, the Kings have added one goal to their total of 34, which is also the season total of the quartet of Kane, DeBrincat, Toews, and Saad combined.

You mean Ilya Kovalchuk and his five goals weren’t the answer?

Where would this team be without its leading scorer, Ilya Kovalchuk? The answer is in exactly the same spot standings-wise, and possibly the same place points-wise, depending on how a theoretical Knifey Spoony against Lundqvist and three friends turned out. If you pretend the Kings have two additional Kovalchuks? Well, they would break the salary cap by over $12 million, but also finally pull into a tie for 30th in goals with Anaheim. The only unrealistic part of this scenario is imagining the Kings bringing in multiple players in one offseason.

Anze Kopitar has six points. What’s the deal there?

And only three of those six points were at evens, where his most common wingers are Alex Iafallo, and since his return from injury, Dustin Brown. Playing around with sortable categories on Natural Stat Trick, one notices that his current numbers are still above 50% (hovering around 52-53% for Corsi and Fenwick). However, they are mostly below either his rookie 2007-2008 season or his broken wrist 2016-2017 season. He’s 31 and it has become easier and easier to concentrate on just shutting his line down. But I bet if Eastern Conference writers stayed up to watch him play more often, he would have at least eight or nine points by now.

Does Rob Blake have any idea what he’s doing?

He knows exactly what he is doing: firing everyone under him before people realize this team is going nowhere. Was it really John Stevens’ fault after just 95 games?

What does the immediate future hold? What should it hold?

The immediate future holds rooting against any hot streaks that pull them ahead of other bottom-feeding teams, or convince upper management not to make more drastic changes. Everything with a pulse should be traded, but the team’s most liquid asset is Carl Hagelin, whose best case scenario is being flipped for a fifth-rounder to a team looking for #SPEED. Their youngest defenseman, Paul LaDue, is 26. Dion Phaneuf is still signed until 2021. The immediate future does not look great, even with a big lottery win, so maybe it is time to revert to planting drugs on albatross contracts.

 

Game #20 Preview Suite

Preview

Spotlight

Q&A

Douchebag Du Jour

I Make A Lot Of Graphs

Lineups & How Teams Were Built

Everything Else

You Share The Same Fate As The People You Hate – ’18-’19 Team Previews: L.A. Kings

By Sam Fels 1569 0

You’re getting a twofer today, as we look to get back on schedule. There’ll be another one somewhere this week. Am I gonna tell you when? Sure won’t!

Ah yes, the other fallen dynasty. The team that made missing the playoffs after being a Cup contender the year before a trendy thing to do. Those Los Angeleans, always setting the trends. The Kings returned to the playoffs last year, except no one knows why. They didn’t want to be there, played like they didn’t want to be there, and were home before anyone noticed anything was amiss by them being there. They got a revival season out of both Jonathan Quick and Anze Kopitar, which are the only reasons they did anything anyone might notice. And they’ll probably need both to do so again if they’re not going to drown in anonymity behind LeBron and of course, Jimmy Butler (in his own mind).

Let’s take a look at the silver and black, because we honestly might not talk about them ever again.

2017-2018: 45-29-8 98 points  239 GF 209 GA  50.0 CF% 48.0 xGF%  7.8 SH% .930 SV%

Goalies: See that last mark up there? That was fourth-best in the league, and the major reason the Kings were able to come in from the cold, come down from the wire and make the playoffs. Quick had his best season in five last year, with a .921 SV% overall and a .926 at evens. He was certainly helped by a nuclear October where he went for a .942, but he backed that up in February and March with a .928 and .926.

The problem for the Kings is that all of his marks last year were above his career norms, which despite what crusty old white guys tell you have always been just about average. Quick won the Kings the Cup in ’12, this much is so. He was along for the ride in ’14. And he’s been along for the ride most of his career. In a season where he’ll turn 33, it’s probably ok to expect him to return to his career norms, which are just about league-average. And that won’t get it done for this squad.

Looking to back him up is Jack Campbell. You may remember him from such films as “Once Was A US World Junior Goalie” or “Was Gonna Save The Stars Five Years Ago.” It never happened for Campbell, and this could be his first dip into full-time NHL waters. The Kings don’t really have much of a net if Quick either gets hurt or is just some guy. Some guy named Quick.

Defense: After the Leafs threw all the money at John Tavares, there really wasn’t much of anywhere Drew Doughty could threaten to go if the Kings didn’t sign him. So they signed him until he finally goes to prison hopefully, for $11 million a year. Doughty is just about still one of the league’s premier puck-movers, and had his best year points-wise and possession-wise last year. He’s going to have to do it again. Because the rest of this blue line is covered in ants.

Jake Muzzin has always been a product of whatever Doughty could do, which somehow got him a Team Canada spot once upon a time. Alec Martinez is losing his fastball, and spent most of last season getting his head caved in. I don’t know what an Oscar Fantenberg is, but I do know that I don’t have to know what an Oscar Fantenberg is. Do we really need to go over Dion Phaneuf again? If you insist…he’s awful and terrible and slow and bad and stupid and ugly and expensive and slow and bad and did I say stupid already? Yeah, sucks. This team needs to put Kale Clague and his dumb name on the second pairing yesterday, but won’t because the Kings are SO TOUGH AND GRINDY AND YOU EARN IT HERE LOOK AT HOW BIG WE ARE WE EAT STAPLERS HARF HARF HARF.

Forwards: As you probably can guess, I cannot wait for this Ilya Kovalchuk hail mary to go balls-up by January 1st. He’s 35, hasn’t played in this league in years which in the meantime got a whole lot faster and I’m fairly sure he’s here to soak up the sun and cash a check. This is the hockey version of Michael Anthony. Oh sure, he’ll probably still score 30 goals, maybe even more, maybe even a lot more. A majority of them will come when the Kings are already trailing 3-0 late in the 3rd. It’s gonna be fucking special.

Anyway, Kopitar still rips. Jeff Carter does too, when he’s healthy, Which he never is and now he’s gonna turn 34 during the season. They probably expect Dustin Brown to shoot the lights out again. Dustin Brown will return to putting his left skate on his right foot this season. Tanner Pearson and Tyler Toffoli are still here to do whatever it is they do.

The bottom six however…woof. This would lose your entire security deposit. And I think they’re all named Alex. Kyle Clifford? Nate Thompson? Trevor Lewis? Aren’t these all the same guy? Does it matter? I’m sure it does not.

Outlook: There was a brief time, at the beginning of last season, when John Stevens looked to bring the Kings out of the deep, dark cave they had lived in under Darryl Sutter and actually try and play some hockey that wouldn’t be considered narcolepsy. Then he quickly realized they couldn’t do it as well as about half the teams in the league, and they went back to dungeon hockey and hoping Quick could save enough shots and Kopitar could make enough along with Doughty to squeak them by. It worked once. It’s unlikely too again, and this team is not built to deal with a league getting faster and younger.

Most likely Quick has a small regression, Kopitar does too, and there just isn’t enough scoring to eke out the 3-2 wins they used to specialize in. This blue line spends most nights getting tire tracks implanted on it by the likes of Vegas, San Jose, and even Calgary and Edmonton could do a number on them. And given the age of the roster, it could be a long trip into the abyss for them.

Can’t. Wait.

 

Previous Team Previews

Detroit Red Wings

Buffalo Sabres

Boston Bruins

Florida Panthers

Montreal Canadiens

Ottawa Senators

Tampa Bay Lightning

Toronto Maple Leafs

Carolina Hurricanes

Columbus Blue Jackets

New Jersey Devils

New York Islanders

New York Rangers

Philadelphia Flyers

Pittsburgh Penguins

Washington Capitals

Anaheim Ducks

Arizona Coyotes

Calgary Flames

Edmonton Oilers

Everything Else

Well Pilgrim, Not Until You Eat the Peanuts Outta My… – FFUD’s Player Reviews: Jonathan Toews or Time To Eat Meat Again

By Adam Hess 4227 0

For the second straight season, it felt like we watched Jonathan Toews go through a year in which he played very well, had solid underlying numbers, and yet due to voodoo or bad luck or the lack of lean meat in his diet he couldn’t find the score sheet. The hilarious part is he still put up 20 goals and 52 points in 74 games, which is still pretty damn good. But his paycheck and role demand more, and his play deserved it. Shall we?

Jonathan Toews

74 games, 20 goals, 32 assists, 52 points, -1, 47 PIM

56.14 CF%, 4.79 CF% rel, 53.09 xGF%, 4.19 xGF% rel, 55.15 Zone Start Ratio

I think there’s a lot of value in bookending the preview/review process with players as a writer, which is why I wanted to do this review for Toews after doing the preview earlier this year. Honestly, before looking into any of his numbers, I went back and read said player preview. That presented me with a problem – I, uh, think I might end up repeating myself from that post a lot.

That’s because, like I said to open this one, Toews had another year comparable to his 2016-17 campaign. He had elite shot metrics with that 56.14 CF, the expected goals was nicely in his favor as well at 53.09, and yet a career low shooting percentage drives the production numbers down. Compare those expected goals to his actual GF% of 50.57 and it gives you an even better scope of just how bad his luck was. Spending damn near the entire year with Brandon Saad, who was going through the same damn thing (TEASER: review coming tomorrow from Mr. Pullega), didn’t really help matters.

Let’s play a projection game. After shooting 9.5% this year, his first time below 10% in his career, Jonathan Toews’ career shooting percentage has now dropped to 14.1 percent. If he simply shot that rate this year, he’d have scored 10 more goals. 62 point year in 74 games. That’s good.

Before these last two years, Toews was shooting 15.1% on his career – and while a one percent drop probably doesn’t strike you as huge, to drop a goal per 100 shots after just two seasons is kind of insane. If Toews had shot at 15.1% this year, he has 32 goals. Again, good.

And again Brandon Saad’s career low shooting year definitely impacted Toews as well, likely on the assist side of the ledger. I won’t dig too much into the numbers so as not to steal Pullega’s thunder for tomorrow, but if Saad shot his career rate this year, I bet Toews added anywhere from 2-8 assists to his ledger as well.

So the ultra-optimistic side of this projection game puts Toews at 32 goals and 40 assists, and if you play slightly more conservative you have him at 30 and 32. Either way, you’re looking at somewhere in the 65-70 point range in 74 games played. That is damn near elite production in today’s NHL. “But Twitter told me the sky is falling on Jonathan Toews,” you say! Twitter is wrong. It is always wrong.

A while back I compared Toews to Anze Kopitar, and that comparison is still apt. Kopitar had a much worse 2016-17 than Toews in the luck department, but things swung his way in 2017-18 and he ended up with career highs in shooting percentage, goals, and points, and all of that earned him a Hart trophy nomination and he just might win the damn thing even though it should go to Nathan MacKinnon. But here’s the most encouraging part of Kopitar’s huge year as far as it applies to Toews – his combined shooting percentage from last year with a career low shooting percentage, and this year with the career high, sit right in line with his career numbers and his typical fluctuation of his career.

Obviously there are flaws to some of this numerology I’m doing, but the over-arching point is that things aren’t all bad for Toews unless there is more to this whole thing than shooting percentage. The overall numbers don’t indicate that there is, though, meaning that unless there is some lingering injury that is somehow leading to the decline in shot conversion, everything we know about numbers and regression indicates that Captain Vegan is due for a correction.

And if all else fails, maybe he should start eating steak again. How the fuck could anyone give up steak?

Everything Else

You Get What Anyone Gets: Saying Goodbye To The LA Kings

By Sam Fels 1955 0

It used to be tradition that playoff exits were complimented by eulogies on Puck Daddy. But with Wysh off in the Connecticut hinterlands and those who remain at Yahoo! being a bunch of Canadian giblets who take things far too seriously (and Lambert being angry and definitely not a Bruins fan), we don’t need them to do what we do best. So fuck it. We’ll eulogize all 15 teams that will eventually fall. And we take unique pleasure in getting to do the Kings first. 

Leave it to the Kings to play quite simply the most unwatchable series since the Lockout of  ’04-’05. There are snuff films that have been lighter fare than their four-game outhouse-cleaning loss to the Knights. If they’d offered this as a prop bet it would have been easy money. While they locked Darryl Sutter out of the dressing room multiple times and eventually kicked his muppet-gone-wrong face out because he made them play a style that would have broken Noriega, when the chips were down John Stevens went back to the only thing the Kings know. Dump, crash, rumble, back up, repeat. Except it didn’t work, and the Kings three goals in the whole series pretty much attest to that. But what three goals they were!

What’s infuriating about the Kings is you can find no better example of a team not learning a lesson from its own methods. Better than the Oilers or Flames or even Hawks. While the Kings were able to belch/fart/ralph their way to a Cup in ’12 thanks to a sweetheart draw and Quick’s .946, they won again in 2014 by beating the Hawks at their own game. They were fast. They were creative. They were lethal. They had Kopitar, Gaborik, Carter, Toffoli, Pearson, Williams shotgunning all over the place. Doughty, Muzzin, Martinez, Voynov (blech) were pushing the play from the back to a ridiculous pace. Nothing has ever come close to the sheer madness and coke-binge hockey (maybe literally) that was the ’14 West Final. The Kings got it, and did it better than anyone to win their second in three years.

And then they went back to their covered-in-dung ways, while the rest of the league went about trying to replicate what they had just done. Such brilliant moves as trading for Milan Lucic and/or Dion Phaneuf or Vincent Lecavalier or bringing back Rob Scuderi. It was like Homer telling the car designers “I need an immobile asshole here, here, and here!” The result has been one playoff win since. One.

The Kings are basically the obnoxious frat boy who did well in college with dumb sorority girls who didn’t know better (or were forced not to because all frat boys are rapists, SCIENCE FACT), but then met a wonderful girl right after and suddenly became a really good guy…until dumping her after reading Barfstool or a few months because she didn’t shotgun beers or something. And now they’re just the old guy at the same bar, not realizing it’s all over.

In the end, this is what Kings fans want, because it’ll give them more time to bitch about the individual awards their players won’t win. Not only do Kings fans feel aggrieved that Kopitar or Doughty won’t be taking home hardware, they’ll accuse everyone of lacking moral fiber who doesn’t think they should. I guess we shouldn’t expect anything else from a city that blows itself as hard as LA does about the industry they created and only they really care about. DiCaprio didn’t campaign as hard for “The Revenant” as these dinguses. Last week every writer east of the Mississippi received a tote bag marked “from TheRoyalHalf on behalf of Anze.” Next year everyone get ready for a “Trevor Lewis Should Win The Selke And If You Don’t Vote For Him You Killed Jesus” campaign.

The Hawks window may be over, but it didn’t slam nearly as hard as the Kings did. And no one in LA is going to miss them, because next year the Lakers might win 30 games. Also, Drew Doughty eats the homeless from Skid Row.

Everything Else

Night Songs – Round 1 Day 3: Disband The Kings

By Sam Fels 1722 0

Clearly the highlight of the evening were the reaction shots of Bruce Boudreau as the Jets put his Wild to the sword again last night. You can tell he knows he’s utterly fucked here, and would have been even if Ryan Suter had been healthy. I wonder if that filters down to his team. We know his panic stations-like attitude in previous Game 7s always did. Anyway, let’s run it through on this drippy Saturday.

Flyers 5 – Penguins 1 (Tied 1-1)

See, a lot of people think the Brian Elliot Experience means he’s getting punctured like Boromir every outing. Not so. The Elliot Experience means that he’s going to put together just enough good games, or stretches, to make you believe in him before he becomes a turned-over turtle. So was last night. He was excellent, Matt Murray definitely wasn’t, Flyers win, and now they’re believing again. But don’t you worry. Elliot will shit a chicken either in Game 3 or Game 4, and the Penguins will assuredly win the next two, whichever it is. This is the way he wants it.

Wild 1 – Jets 4 (Jets lead 2-0)

There probably isn’t going to be a more lopsided series than this one. The Kings-Knights one has been but Jonathan Quick has kept it from getting silly. Devan Dubnyk quite simply is not capable, nor are the Kings facing the firepower the Wild are. It sounds weird to gush about just how loaded the Jets are, but there was their fourth line, a dominant fourth line, getting their third and icing goal last night. There’s nowhere for the Wild to turn. And the first two Jets goals were a result of a d-man simply going cowboy. That’s Dustin Byfuglien’s thing of course, it’s not as much Tyler Myers’s. But that’s what it takes at this time of year, because it’s the only way you’re going to outnumber the defensive team and get coverage to break down. This looks a lot like the Wild’s 2013 series against the Hawks, where they hung around in Game 1 but didn’t have another gear to find in Game 2 when the superior team could relax a bit. Sure, they might spasm a home win, but they’re toast.

Kings 1 – Knights 2 OT (Knights lead 2-0)

Everyone needs this series to end now. The Kings might point to the absence (deserved, by the way) of Drew Doughty as the reason they basically went Mourinho on this one, but it’s no different than what they did in Game 1 when they had the gap-toothed scumbag in the lineup. They’re terrified of the Knights’ speed, because their blue line is slow and basically bad, so they’re going to do everything to keep it under wraps. The result has been two games that have set the sport back 20 years, and basically have us longing for the NBA Playoffs today. Compare Kopitar and the Kings this year to Toews and the Hawks all you want, but if the Hawks put on this kind of faire you wouldn’t watch and we’d resort to doing ketamine or something. Maybe Kings fans constantly complain about the individual awards their players don’t win simply so they can feel anything after watching this team all season. The lyrics to “Comfortably Numb” were written about watching a full season of this.

Everything Else

Watching the Party – FFUD’s 1st Round Preview: Kings vs. Knights or This Is Bat Country

By Sam Fels 1550 0

 vs. 

SCHEDULE: Game 1 Wednesday, Game 2 Friday, Game 3 Sunday, Game 4 April 17th

Amazingly, the Kings and their fans are going to take a break from complaining/campaigning for their players to win awards they don’t deserve to play a playoff series. But as we all know, what really counts is what individual awards your team garners. Anyway, the Kings might have drawn the sweetheart spot here and play a fading Vegas team that still was able to hang onto the division because the rest of the Pacific blows goats. Anyway, this could be a long series, but it won’t be all that much fun to watch.

Goalies: There will be a ton of talk about Jonathan Quick’s playoff pedigree, and it will ignore the fact that Quick has as many crap playoff campaigns as excellent ones. He was terrible in 2014 but his team was so high-octane it didn’t matter. And he wasn’t any better when the Kings got trounced in 2016 by the Sharks. Quick closed the season pretty roughly in three April appearances but that shouldn’t nullify how good he was in March. This was his best regular season since that 2012 triumph, so one should expect something closer to the dominant Quick in the playoffs than the one who couldn’t stop a sloth in the sand.

There may be a lot of talk of Marc-Andre Fleury’s playoff foibles, but that was a long time ago. Fleury has been at least good and sometimes excellent in his last three playoff runs, and was possibly the biggest reason the Pens got a second Cup last year when Matt Murray was hurt. And that Penguins team was not defensively sound. Again, he’s much more likely to be average or better than he is to have a full body burf that he did in 2012.

Defense: Well, they’ll try and tell you that Drew Doughty deserves another Norris, and he’s been good as he usually is. But he’s not Norris-worthy, and the Kings probably need him to be because the rest of this crew sucks. Dion Phaneuf is terrible, has pretty much always been terrible, and with how quick the Knights are you’re going to see how terrible. Alec Martinez is fine, I guess. Christian Folin is not. When you need Jake Muzzin, you’re in a place you need to get out of. Look or the Knights to get behind this team a lot.

I don’t know how the Knights did it, because this blue line should suck. The only one you’d want is Nate Schmidt, and maybe Shea Theodore if you squint. I’m not sure the Kings have the forward depth to attack this weakness, and if Jeff Carter is feeling frisky the Knights are going to have some problems. There should be chances and both goalies are going to have to be on their toes to keep there from being a lot of goals.

Forwards: The Kings are top heavy, with most of the heavy lifting being done by Anze Kopitar, who somehow also re-exhumed Dustin Brown. Toffoli and Carter on the second line have dovetailed into a playoff boomstick before, and that’s the Kings hope. If Adrian Kempe pops off that could tilt this. But there isn’t much on the bottom six.

Again, we don’t know much about what the Knights here, because we haven’t seen their top six forwards as top six forwards in the playoffs. Wild Bill Karlsson isn’t going to shoot 25% this series, you wouldn’t think. Can Marchessault and Smith get goals when it’s hardest? We know Haula does when he plays the Hawks. But they’ve gotten this are, and if they can replicate their “get it the fuck up there quick!” style from the regular season a plodding Kings blue line is going to struggle. If they convert those chances, this fluke might go a little farther.

Prediction: I don’t think too many people want to see either of these teams in the second round, but one’s going. The Kings hardly inspire, but the Knights won eight games in regulation since Feb. 23rd. Four of those were over Vancouver, Calgary, and Detroit. That’s not exactly roaring into the playoffs (and an indictment on the division that no one could run them down). I feel like the Kings are just going to attrition this. And it’ll take a while. Kings in 7. 

Everything Else

Game #60 – I’m behind on what’s really important – Hawks 1, Kings 3

By Adam Hess 2152 0

Box Score

Hockey Stats

Natural Stat Trick

Trying to sum this game up is going to be kinda hard. It’d be way easier if the Hawks played real well and just missed on some chances, or even if they played like absolute trash. Instead, they just looked like they didn’t wanna be there, like how you feel when you’re sitting at work wondering if your job is even that important. And who’s to say? To the bullets:

– I can confidently say one thing that I couldn’t stop noticing in this game is how fuckin’ bad Jordan Oesterle is, which is really a theme at this point and not exclusive to just this game. The first Kings goal was maybe a little questionable because of some maybe-goalie-interference, but Oesterle did nothing to help Forsberg out by standing right in his line of sight and screening the absolutely life out of him. Then later, in the second period I watched Oesterle stand still as a damn statue in the middle of his own zone before getting absolutely toasted in a foot race the other way, which resulted in a 2-on-1 for the Kings. They didn’t convert, but it was just embarrassing to watch, and I kinda wish they had just because it would’ve made that whole play more of a focal point on Oesterle’s part. No matter how much he fucks up he seems to be bulletproof in Q’s eyes right now, while Connor Murphy can’t get more than a third pair assignment and Michal Kempny just got shipped out for a lottery ticket cuz he couldn’t get a fair shake either. Fuck this.

– Q went after the Toews-Kopitar matchup for most of the night, and it saw some success. Toews posted a nice 57.69% CF at 5v5 tonight, which was about a point and a half above team rate. That team number got inflated by some score effects after LA went up 3-0, so I think in reality Toews won that battle very convincingly. I don’t really know what that’s worth, but it just felt like something sorta noteworthy, I guess.

– The worst part about this game was that the Kings worst players pretty much proved to be the difference makers. They got goals from Torey Mitchell, Andy Adreoff, and Dion Phaneuf. Those goals were the fourth, third, and fifth tallies for the scorers this year, respectively. That’s just frustrating to me. I am firmly on the “tank” team at this point, if you wanna call it that, but getting beat by another team’s scrubs is very disheartening. Then again, this team almost lost to Glendale by a touchdown, so nothing is beyond them I guess.

– I don’t really wanna write much more about this one, to be honest. The Blackhawks clearly did not care about this one – why should I?

– The Hawks are back it at home against Ottawa on Wednesday. Hope and pray that one is a chance for Stan to scout EK65 before managing a miracle trade for him to solve all of our problems (I CAN BE OPTIMISTIC, OKAY). Meanwhile LA heads to Winnipeg for a game tomorrow night. Wish them luck on their travels, as they have to take the bus because Winnipeg doesn’t have an airport.

Everything Else

Game #60 – Kings vs. Hawks Preview, Car Insurance Quote – New Dark Ages

By Matt McClure 2231 0

 vs 

Game Time: 7:30 CST
TV/Radio: WGN Ch. 9 (Local), NHLN-US, TVAS, SportsNet, WGN-AM 720
Fountain & Fairfax: JFTC

How the mighty have fallen. Half of the Stanley Cups in the last decade belong to these two franchises, one in danger of missing the playoffs for the third time in four seasons, and the other literally all but officially eliminated in February. And even while no one else in the league’s heart is breaking for either of these two franchises led by scumbag braintrusts, the Hawks will welcome the Kings to the United Center tonight out of obligation if not urgency.

Everything Else

Game #60 – Kings vs. Hawks Spotlight: Drew Dougthy, Erik Karlsson, And Windows

By Sam Fels 1719 0

In the next seven days or so, the biggest drama in the NHL will almost certainly be where, and if, Erik Karlsson is going to be traded. If the Sens were sensible, and they’re not, they’d move him before the deadline. His peak value is now, as any team that acquires him will get two playoff runs with him instead of one, should he be moved at the draft. They’d also obviously have first shot at signing him to a long-term deal, a deal that will certainly crack the foundations of any team.

The question should be is if the Kings are in the same spot with Drew Doughty.

The differences between the Kings and Senators aren’t as big as you think. The Kings are still scrapping for a playoff spot from the Pacific, two points out of both the third spot in the division and the last wild card. The Senators are at the beginning of a rebuild, and have to figure out who they’re going to build the future around whether Karlsson is there or not. But are the Kings so ar away from that?

They may think that if they can sneak into the bottom seeds, maybe catch the Knights or something in the 1st round, Quick gets hot again as he was at the beginning of the  year, they could make some noise. But there’s a lot of ifs there, even if Jeff Carter coming back is a huge boost.

Beyond this season though, there are issues. Doughty is going to command $10 million a year, you’d have to think, or close to it, when he hits the market in 2019. The Kings are already committed to paying Carter and Dustin Brown $11 million combined until 2022, unless of course a lockout and compliance buyouts save them in Brown’s case. They’re paying Kopitar $10 million until the wheel in the sky stops turning. Adrian Kempe, Alex Iafallo, and Michael Amadio are going to get raises after this season, though probably modest ones. They’ve just taken on Dion Phaneuf’s $5.2 million hit for…reasons. Basically, they’re not fitting in another $9-$10 million player in Doughty.

The other question is how much more are the Kings going to get out of this group? They’ve gotten a renaissance year out of Kopitar, and he’s 30. Carter is 33. Martinez is 30. Quick is 32. If they figure they’re going to be toast when Doughty goes UFA anyway, they might want to at least inquire if they could find their next #1 d-man or center in exchange for him.

That’s if you don’t think this Kings ship has already sailed. Since their 2014 championship they’ve missed the playoffs twice and gotten clocked in the first round by the Sharks in 2016. They look headed for either of those results again. That might be it, so what would you be holding onto?

It would take some real stones for any GM to basically wave the white flag on this season and cash in on Doughty, even more so a first-year GM in Rob Blake. Doughty is basically carrying the team again from the back, with by far the best relative Corsi and expected goals of any d-man. His 41 points are second on the team to Kopitar’s. Again, the easiest path is a hit and hope in this spring, and the one almost every hockey team chooses.

But with Phaneuf’s contract it’s hard to see where the Kings could add this summer to take one last swing with Doughty in town. Stranger things have happened, but perhaps the Kings should have one eye on tomorrow instead of both on what might be today.

 

Game #60 Preview

Preview

Spotlight

Q&A

Douchebag Du Jour

I Make A Lot Of Graphs

Lineups & How Teams Were Built