Pretty much the worst-case scenario for the Kings last night. LA got destroyed in regulation against Chicago. Vancouver picked up a regulation road win against St. Louis, and Calgary… Calgary did this against Dallas. That leaves our heroes 3 points back in the standings with just 6 games to play. Seems dire, right? Well, it kind of is at this point, to be honest. But remember that the Kings have a game in hand, and it’s enough that in spite of everything LA still controls its own destiny. Take a look:
So how likely is running the table? The last six games are: vs. Edmonton (back-to-back for Edmonton), vs. Colorado (back-to-back for Colorado), @ Vancouver, @ Edmonton (back-to-back for LA), @ Calgary, vs. San Jose. Edmonton, Colorado, and Calgary are the three worst possession teams in the Western Conference, so that’s a good sign. San Jose and Vancouver have roughly league-average possession numbers. Meanwhile, we at Jewels from the Crown continue to think the Kings are good.
Now, that doesn’t make running the table likely. Even if we decide the Kings have, say, a 75% chance of winning each game against Edmonton/Colorado/Calgary and a 65% chance against San Jose/Vancouver (obviously oversimplifying here), that still gives them just a 13% chance of running the table. And those odds are probably too generous to the Kings, given how random single hockey games are.
Still, the schedule is definitely friendly, and 5-1-0 or 4-1-1 are strong possibilities.
Meanwhile, the Flames will play @ St. Louis, @ Edmonton, vs. Phoenix, vs. Los Angeles, @ Winnipeg. That’s tougher. St. Louis and Winnipeg are two very good teams. The Flames can’t reasonably be favored in either of those games. I think it’s very likely that they drop at least 2 or 3 points in their 4 non-LA games. Remember that the Flames are riding an unsustainable wave of percentages; their possession numbers have been awful all year and have been especially bad since Mark Giordano’s injury. Even Edmonton and Phoenix are way ahead of them. It’s really bad.
So this is LA’s most likely path to the playoffs–LA goes about 4-1-1 down the stretch while Calgary finishes 2-2-1 or so (both records including an LA regulation victory over Calgary), and LA squeaks out the 3rd seed in the Pacific.
But what if LA and Calgary finish tied in points? Currently Calgary has 3 more ROWs, which is the first tiebreaker. But if LA beats Calgary in regulation, they could actually catch Calgary in ROWs. In that case, the next tiebreaker is points acquired in the season series… except in this scenario both teams would have 6. The next next tiebreaker would be to throw out the first game in the season series played at Los Angeles (since there were 3 Kings-Flames games played at Los Angeles this year and 2 played at Calgary). That game was a loss for the Kings, so throw it out and the Kings win the tiebreaker! Yes!
Catching Winnipeg
This is a less desirable way to make the playoffs because the Kings would end up as a wild card, and either go on the road against Anaheim (not so bad) or on the road against the Central champion (pretty bad). Kings fans are probably more concerned with getting in than quibbling about matchups, though.
Note: I have no idea why Darryl Sutter said the wild card is out of the picture. The wild card is not out of the picture.
By the way, about that Winnipeg-Calgary game on the last day: here’s a fun scenario. The Kings go 3-0-2 heading into the last day and have 96 points and 38 ROW. The Flames have gone 2-0-2 and have 97 points and 40 ROW. The Jets have gone 4-1-0 and have 98 points and 36 ROW. If the Jets-Flames game ended in regulation, the Kings would pass the loser with a win over San Jose. However, the Jets and Flames could guarantee themselves both playoff spots if the game went into overtime; then the Kings would be left out.
That… probably won’t happen though.
Given that LA is an excellent team, has an extremely soft remaining schedule, and only needs one of two teams to struggle a bit down the stretch, I think LA’s playoff odds are still probably above 50%, even though the Kings are a couple points back with not many games left.
This LA team is approximately the same quality as the 2012, 2013, and 2014 versions (which should be no surprise, as it’s mostly the same players). If the Kings do sneak into the playoffs, they can certainly do some damage.