Let's see. Where to begin?

• Sharks won. 
• In overtime.
• They dominated early.
• Then the Kings dominated about half of the second and third periods. 
• Jonathan Quick gave them one juicy rebound and let in a soft one.
• Then he played like a Vezina winner.
• Antti Niemi looked not great most of the game. 
• Then he made that save on Clifford. 
• And on the wrap-around by Ryan Smyth.
• Alexei Ponikarovsky played about the heaviest game I've seen him play as a King.
• Kyle Clifford and/or Trevor Lewis are going to score a GWG or two in this series, I think.
• Drew Doughty is trying to do too much. The missed hip-check was unnecessary.
• And the interference penalty could have been fatal.
• The Kings were nervous in the first period. 
• Then the Sharks were nervous.
• I guess they still are, because Todd McLellan is on "the podium" right now talking about how the non-call on Stoll changed the momentum of the game and allowed the Kings to dominate, the theory being that Stoll takes a lot of face-offs (unfair, he should have been kicked out!) and the Sharks were down to five D.
• I take the fact that they're making excuses in a win to be a good sign. 
  

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• In my opinion, the play that was the "game changer" was the Alec Martinez shot off Oscar Moller's nifty pass, which Roberto Luongo knocked down with his glove in the second period. That would have made it 2-0 Kings. 
• Drew Doughty's two "errors." I don't exactly -- or at least entirely -- blame Doughty for either one, and here's why: that's what you get for all this talk about stepping up. Everybody and his brother has been encouraging the leaders of this team to "step up" in the wake of the recent injuries. Pretty much everyone singles out Drew Doughty as prime stepper-upper candidate #1. Well, he stepped up. And by stepping up, he stepped right out of the system, nobody covered for him, and we got burned. Subtract one if not two points for the Kings. How does "stepping up" (good) differ from "trying to do too much" (bad)? Who knows. Actually, I know. The difference is, if you score, you're stepping up. If you don't, you're trying to do too much. There is a balance, of course, but it requires the whole team to be on the same page, or else "stepping up" doesn't help, and in fact, hurts. 
• Those two goals last night illustrate how quickly the smallest misjudgment can lead directly to a loss. 
• Didn't Brad Richardson have a scoring chance in the third? I'm wondering if the zero shots thing is related to shot-counting homerism.
• Great goal by Kyle Clifford, great pass by Doughty, and even greater Clifford celebration. I sense a Clifford celebration compilation coming. 
• I haven't studied any replays, so don't jump down my throat when I say that I didn't think, watching it in real time, that Clifford's hit deserved any penalty at all. The guy knew he was there, turned into the check, and ducked down so his head would get the brunt of it. Not intentially. He just wanted to slip under the check, I think. But too bad. That one is not Clifford's fault. (Yes, yes, I know, they're being extra careful these days -- do it when the game isn't on the line and the check isn't marginal.)

Yesterday, at somewhere around two o'clock, my kid and I stopped playing NHL11 so I could program the DVR to record that evening's Kings/Stars game. When we switched over to the cable feed, the tuner was (of course) already set to Fox Sports West, but to our surprise we were looking at the Kings up 2-1 with 52 seconds to go in the third period and the Dallas net empty. 

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The Kings had a power play in the 3rd period of last night's game, with a chance to go up by two goals. But instead -- as you know -- Drew Doughty made an ill-advised flip pass that was intercepted by Jamie Benn and converted into a short-handed (breakaway) goal. Almost as troubling, earlier in the shift, Doughty misread the play in the offensive zone, leading to turnover and a short-handed 2-on-1 against. I'm not singling Doughty out to blame him for last night's loss. He's certainly entitled to his fair share of the blame, but by no means all of it.

What I would like to know is, what was going on during that shift? The two mistakes I just described, on a single power-play, during a critical time, of a critical game, against our closest rival in the standings (though there are several candidates for that title). What is the differential diagnosis?

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I'm Just Going to Pretend That Never Happened.

Some losses are symptomatic of some fatal systemic flaw that must be addressed. Some are just stupid and have no meaning.

First, thoughts on the game: 

• I'm going to go a little against the grain and say that today's game could easily have gone either way. The Flyers had the post on their first shot and several other very scrambly crowded-crease moments. The Kings had Kopitar's post, Simmonds's breakaway and a few others (Ponikarovsky's cut to the middle). The Kings have lost several of these games this year. It was about time one went their way. I'm not taking anything away from them. It's just that sometimes you play a great game and lose anyway. (That's when Murray says he likes what he sees and everyone wants to fire him.)  
• Another thing compounding the feeling that we dodged a bullet: two too-many-men penalties. 
• Shutting out the Flyers AND winning both fights in Philly is especially delightful.
• Westgarth's grab-hand assault was eye-opening. And I thought Kyle Clifford destroyed Daniel Carcillo. But I'm biased. 
• I wouldn't be surprised if Stoll gets a game suspension for the Pronger hit. 

Key to the standings: Q is my standings, ranked by points-blown. OFF is the official standings (via ESPN). PRJ is projected final point total. PB is points-blown. +/- is points-blown above or below the 8th seed. TO95 is the record each team needs to get to 95 points (the newly-adjusted best guess threshold for making the playoffs). GR is games-remaining. R/OTW is regulation and OT wins (the first tiebreaker). R/OT/SO is the team's record broken down by wins and losses in each of regulation, overtime, and shoot-out. 

Observations: 

• The best EDM can do is 92 points. They are eliminated. 
• Unless you think COL is going to end the season with an 18-5-3 run, they're done, too. 
• The eleven teams from 3rd to 13th are still in play. That's six playoff spots for eleven teams that are currently separated by 8 points-blown or 11 official points. STL is 11 points behind DAL, but STL has two games in hand. 
• I really don't think DAL (currently 3rd)  has a significantly better chance of making the playoffs than CGY (currently 13th). 
• Everyone is sufficiently bunched together that I'm going to start running the season-series chart more often. Here it is, with a couple of added columns: W+/- shows the difference between the Kings' R/OTW from the above chart, and the R/OTW of the team in question (this is the first tie-breaker); the second new column is GD, which shows the difference between the Kings' goal differential and that of the team in question (this is the third tie-breaker -- I resist calling it goal-differential-differential). The second tie-breaker is head-to-head, or season series (unless it's a three or more-way tie, in which case it's the records of all the tied teams against each other, which is beyond the scope of this chart). 

• Andrei Loktionov drew a penalty, helped Brown draw another one on the 2-on-1, should have drawn another when he was thrown to the ice in the crease, hit the post, had three shots, was 3-for-3 on face-offs, and could have scored a handful of goals. Yes, I know: he didn't. But that same performance will get him a hat-trick in the future. At least he looked alive, and made room for himself, and others.
  
• Anze Kopitar. Not to pile on, but jeez! Two shots, looked asleep. I wrote a post about a year ago with a title like "Teddy Purcell is not making Anze Kopitar suck." That was of course during his giant dry-spell, which now just blends together with this year's giant dry-spell. He made several nice defensive plays, and that's important. But he's on pace for 25 goals, which would be his worst total since his rookie season.
  
• Kopitar is 9th among Kings forwards in 5-on-5 G/60 (goals per 60 minutes of icetime), behind Moller, Williams, Parse, Sturm, Stoll, Simmonds, Brown and Smyth. He's 2/100ths of a goal ahead of Loktionov. 
• On the power-play, he's 6th among Kings forwards in G/60. That sounds better, until you realize he's last among the forwards who have scored on the PP at all. Everyone below Kopitar has played less than 50 minutes PP time all year. Kopitar leads the team, with 196 minutes. 
• The Kings are 12-3 when Kopitar scores a goal.
  
• The OT goal is not really on Johnson if you ask me. I blame Smyth for not getting the puck in the zone, just a couple of seconds prior. But those things happen. Shouldn't have gotten to OT in the first place.
  
• I just skimmed through several irate "trade Brown" comments over at LAKi. Although I myself wondered if that wouldn't be a good idea, about a year ago, I'm not ready to sign that petition this season, just yet.
• I must remember, though, not to read his content-free post-game quotes. 
• I'm not arguing for trading him. That seems a little panicky to me. But every time it comes up, and people protest that Brown is untouchable, that seems equally foolish. He is one of the four remaining non-Lombardi picks/acquisitions, the others being Kopitar, Quick and Parse. 
• I thought Martinez looked especially good tonight. Could have scored, too, on that shot at the end of the second period (the second of the Kings' two shots in that period). 
• I'm glad Scuderi stopped the wrap-around with one second left. Put that in the file of plays to remember if the Kings make the playoffs by one point. 
• I think if the Kings insist on scoring just one goal a game leading up to the trade deadline, things are going to get interesting.

But first, the good and the bad from the last two nights: 

The Good: Kings win, Avs lose, Preds lose, Blues lose, Sharks half-lose, Jackets lose, Coyotes lose, Hawks lose. 

The Bad: Flames win, Coyotes win, Ducks win, Wild win.

That's a great pair of days for LA. The Kings win, plus 6.5 good vs 4 bad outcomes. 

The real Western Conference standings: 

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