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Some random thoughts from your humble webmaster

June 11, 2012

A tale of two teams

In my final blog post of the 2011-12 season, I'll take a look back at a pair of teams from this past season: the Los Angeles Kings and -- the Los Angeles Kings.

The Kings truly were two different teams -- the team they put out on the ice in the regular season bore no resemblance to the one they fielded in the playoffs

Now mind you, the Kings weren't a bad team in the regular season -- under the current NHL structure, a team doesn't get into the playoffs by being bad, unlike the 1980s when you could be the sixth worst team in the NHL and still make the playoffs.

But however you would describe the Kings of the regular season, "dominant" wouldn't necessarily come to mind. From December 3-13, the Kings lost five games in a row, all in regulation. That losing streak would cost coach Terry Murray his job, and the team would eventually hire Darryl Sutter as his replacement.

Also look at what the Kings did -- or didn't do -- in February. They lost nine oout of their 14 games that month, gaining only 12 points in the standings. At the end of the month, they were in a three-way tie for the eighth and final playoff spot in the Western Conference.

The turning point came following a last-minute 4-3 loss in Detroit on March 9. Following that game, they won six in a row and nine of their last 14 games, earning points in all but two games.

They finished the regular season with 95 points, but a shootout loss to the San Jose Sharks in the last game of the NHL's regular season left them in eighth place in the West, five points ahead of ninth-place Dallas.

But when the NHL calendar flipped from the regular season to the playoffs, the Kings suddenly became the irrestible force and the immovable object, all rolled up into one as they went on one of the most epic playoff runs in NHL history.

It didn't matter that their first round opponent, the Vancouver Canucks, won the Presidents' Trophy as the best team in the regular season -- they made quick work of them. They jumped out to a 3-0 series lead before winning in five games.

Their next two opponents were the other two division winners in the West, St. Louis and Phoenix. The Kings, however, made it look easy, sweeping the Blues and dispatching the Coyotes in five games.

The Kings' magical run to their first Stanley Cup in franchise history continued in the Stanley Cup Final. They became the first team in NHL history to jump out to a 3-0 series lead in all four rounds of the playoffs. They survived a scare from the New Jersey Devils in the Final, dropping games Four and Five before blowing them out in Game Six at home and claiming the first Stanley Cup in the franchise's 45-year history.

And so with that, 16,313 days after opening their NHL existence with a 4-2 victory over the Philadelphia Flyers (in front of a measley home crowd of 7,035), the Kings can finally call themselves Stanley Cup champions. Congratulations Kings -- both the regular season squeakers and the postseason steamrollers.