- There’s actually half a period left as I type this, but who am I kidding? I’m calling this one for the Sharks.
- While watching this tedious bullshit, it occurred to me that, really and truly, and separate from the fact that the Kings are about to lose their fifth in a row, the Kings are boring.
- Boring.
- If they had won the last few games with the right bounces — you know, the ones they didn’t get — they would be only slightly less boring. Boring is forgivable if you’re winning. Probably it is. But it’s unforgivable if you’re boring and losing.
- Kopitar scores. Really. So what? 4-2. That will be the final. Or 5-2.
- Here’s something else that’s depressing: the Kings have a cap hit above $60MM, and we’re still listening to Bob and Jim talk about how “the Kings need to salvage something here…forget the two points…” How many years have we been hearing that?
- I think I even know why the Kings are boring. They’re boring because they only have one setting. Whatever it is that they’re being told to do, whatever creativity-sucking, mind-numbing scheme they’re following, they don’t seem to be able to shift gears and do something else when it’s not working.
- They just keep doing the same thing, hoping for a different result.
- Murray’s notion of shifting gears is changing his line combinations. And then instructing them to do what they were already supposed to be doing.
- When Murray is “happy” with the Kings’ game (as he was with the Pens loss) and when he writes off a loss to “not getting the bounces,” I’m starting to think that these things aren’t empty platitudes. Because his whole methodology/strategy/whatever appears to be based on playing percentages, the law of averages…bounces. Sometimes the bounces go your way (you win) and sometimes they go the other way (you lose).
- Sometimes I wonder if that’s not the whole plan.
- Playing a theoretically-tight defensive game where you create traffic and adopt a shot mentality will work sometimes and not others, but it’s always boring when you compare it to — for example — skilled players actually playing hockey.
- It’s not as though skilled players actually playing hockey can’t ALSO drive to the net and create traffic and shoot the puck. The Red Wings do both; but they are able to play different types of games, different styles even from line to line.
- During both of the Kings’ giant losing streaks last season, we got a lot of Murray quotes about how the Kings just have to keep doing the right things, and the goals will come. I’m pretty sure that sentiment doesn’t actually mean anything. Some number of goals will come anyway. Just because eventually the Kings start scoring doesn’t mean they started scoring because of the system. Every team in the history of the NHL has scored some goals during whatever season, usually around 2 goals per game if you suck and 3 or more if you don’t suck.
- How many times has Jim Fox said, “It’s still early”?
- Although I hate him with near complete purity, I think Marc Crawford would be a better coach for this team.
- Or…dare I say it…Andy Murray? I don’t suppose he could be coaxed out of the college ranks… No, he’s too principled. And it would be weird.
- But he is the only Kings coach to win a playoff series since 1993.
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