battleofcali.com

After the 2014 NHL season, which featured the single most exhausting playoff experience I could have imagined, I openly wondered if this was the end of the Kings’ epic journey. There is also the long-view that the Kings are probably going to be struggling for a few more years. You got Adrian Kempe, who is more a complimentary piece who’s role should be more limited to former legend Dwight King’s role, and Derek Forbort who is a Willie Mitchell/Regehr/Rob Scuderi replacement. Perhaps having hired him and giving him a shot to implement a system in a team before they all quit in the pre-season would have been a better option.

Stoll was a second line center for the Kings back in the 2009-2011 days of playoff maybes, but got bumped to the third line which was more of a natural fit. The Voynov fisaco may have resulted in a wash of a season in 2015 where the defense was never able to recover, but in time Derek Forbort, Paul LaDue, , and now Sean Walker have offset that loss (just in time for Phaneuf to be totally unnecessary). Lately, natural wingers got stuffed into the center spot, wasting their talent (Kempe), or it was too large a role for them (Shore), or they just fucking sucked because they were riding dinosaurs with Jesus and their bodies were ravaged by the eons of time (Lecavalier). Just not with Adrian Kempe running the show at the center spot because he’s a mess (and he would totally work better on a line as a winger which is the position he learned to play in the first place).

Unless of course Dustin Brown provides a huge boost to the team’s depth and “intangibles” upon his return. Character and leadership and culture are buzzword terms for something we can’t slap a stat on and quantify, but it’s certainly clear that the Kings miss those veterans who lit fires for the team. The defense remains to have a gaping black hole in it, with the best shot the Kings had at filing it now with Vegas following the Lucic trade that sent me to a sanitarium (IT WAS COLIN MILLER But they have been the same sore spots the team hasn’t come close to fixing since 2015.

The decision felt like a stopgap, with maybe an upside being that Stevens had matured as a coach and developed a quality system. The second half of last season had the Kings stumbling at times, and then got ran over by a Vegas team that out coached Stevens every step of the way. Then of course he remained coach, the Kings had a horrendous preseason (though it’s preseason so who fucking cares? ), and the Kings got out shot and out attempted by miles by every team they’ve matched up against. I played goalie in high school, which means I never paid attention to coaches, but I can wing it no problem.