- 12-19-1, our current run, is the record to beat.
- As far as I can tell, and I am pretty bleary-eyed from fatigue and anger, the Kings have not put together 32 games this crappy in eight years. Not during the rebuild, not during Crawford, not during the Andy Murray flame-out of 2006. Not since before Dustin Brown was drafted by the Kings.
- In 2002-03, they also had a 12-19-1 stretch, in the middle of which they traded Brian Smolinski (for Tim Gleason, good trade) and Mathieu Schneider (for Sean Avery, bad trade).
- In both 1995-96 and 1996-97, the Kings did worse. 1996 was the year of the Gretzky fire-sale, so that’s expected. It’s also one of the darkest periods of crappiness in Kings history.
- Then you would have to go back before 1988, at least, to find another one. But I’m too tired to look back into the purple and gold era.
And here’s a little blast from the past.
Free-falling Kings fire coach Andy Murray – NHL – ESPN
The Los Angeles Kings fired coach Andy Murray on Tuesday night, one day after the struggling team lost for the fifth time in seven games. General manager Dave Taylor made the announcement and said that John Torchetti will be interim coach Wednesday. “This is a drastic step, but we’re looking to turn things around,” Taylor said in a conference call. “If we did nothing, I felt we were going to continue in this downward direction.” […] The Kings (37-28-5) entered Tuesday tied with Edmonton for seventh in the Western Conference playoff race […] “It’s a little odd that we’re nine games over .500 and we’re making a coaching change, but we do have high expectations for our team,” Taylor said. “We know we have to play better down the stretch.”
p.s. they didn’t.