SFGate National Hockey League Sports — San Francisco News
If the Kings are going to have success against Niemi, they will have to do better on the power play than they did during the regular season. Los Angeles slipped from sixth in 2009-10 to 21st this season on the power play despite having most of the same players.
That power-play success a year ago almost carried the Kings into the second round, as they converted 38.5 percent of their chances and got 10 of their 18 goals with the man advantage in a six-game loss to Vancouver in the first round.
“We’re trying to work on moving more,” Johnson said. “Our power play really took a nose dive in the second half, and a lot of it had to do with standing around on the ice. You can be moving the puck back and forth really well, but if it’s not with a purpose, it’s pointless, and that’s kind of what we fell into lately.”
And since Kopitar was the chief power-play pylon, I’m just going to treat the post-season as a full re-boot. Yes, I know the Kings were even worse after Kopitar went down. But as Dean Lombardi reiterated just today, we can’t expect anyone to “fill Kopitar’s hole.” So let’s just not even try.