Regular routine continues for “zombie mode” Kings

Say what you will about the excessive amount of hockey played by this Game 7-inclined Kings team throughout the spring, but for creatures of habit, this schedule has been ideal. You could set your clock to it.

“Guys are in a rhythm right now in terms of playing every game or playing other day,” Matt Greene said. “Sometimes you get a break with two days in between, but it’s a good rhythm to be in, and guys are used to it, and we’ll just take it as it goes.”

Since the playoffs opened on April 17 in San Jose, the Kings have played either every other day or with two days in between games, and nothing more. It’s far, far from the 2012 postseason, when the Kings experienced the hockey equivalent of standing over their golf shot. They waited five days before the St. Louis series, six days before the Phoenix series, and eight days before they opened the Stanley Cup Final in Newark.

Late in the Chicago series, Dustin Brown referred to the mental and physical grind that this Los Angeles team has endured as having put the team in “zombie mode.”

Will there be any lull as the outset of the Stanley Cup Final? After facing three teams that combined to average 111 points during the regular season and finishing a series against the Blackhawks – a team Drew Doughty referenced as “the toughest team we faced by a mile so far this season” – what type of play should be expected when the Kings face the Rangers, a team that finished with 96 points?

Given the data produced by a small-ish sample size, not much. The Kings, a 52.9% Corsi team this postseason, have produced a 52.7% Corsi in Game 1s of a series, and a 52.2% Corsi in playoff games in which exactly two days have elapsed between games. It’s pretty much the statistical representation that Los Angeles has played other sound possession teams, came out with a slight advantage in terms of possession, and that the extra day between games hasn’t really impacted the team at all.

“It’s pretty much the same thing,” Doughty said about the new series. “All the series were very emotional, especially San Jose, especially Chicago. Anaheim wasn’t as emotional as those two. But at the same time, we’re over it now. It’s a new series. We’re playing the Rangers now. What happened in the past is in the past. We can reflect on it after the season is over, but we’ve got a lot of work left to do.”

This sounds like a team comfortable playing in any situations.

“You don’t really want to have a long layover, anyways,” Anze Kopitar said. “I think this time of the year, everybody is energized and the room is pretty relaxed and it definitely helps having some experience from a couple years ago. You know how to handle it a little bit better. You know how to channel it and just I guess channel it towards [Game 1] and be ready for it.”

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