Balance between poor luck, inconsistency discussed

In the larger picture, the Los Angeles Kings missed the playoffs in a season in which they hoped to defend their Stanley Cup and operated with a window of contention that was wide open.

On a more micro level, they continued to demonstrate excellent structure, were the league’s top possession team, and would have contended for home-ice advantage in the first round of the playoffs had they not compiled a profoundly unlucky 3-15 record in games that extended past 60 minutes and won only 13 of 37 one-goal games.

In the last off-season, San Jose Sharks management appeared to view their continually competitive franchise at a crossroads and ultimately removed the captaincy from Joe Thornton, which appeared to have a negative effect in the relationship between players in the dressing room and in the front office, and failed to adequately supplement its top players with secondary scoring and requisite depth. It could be argued that San Jose overreacted to its playoff series loss to Los Angeles last spring.

This spring, it’s probably safe to say that the Kings won’t be making any drastic changes to a core that appears to be hitting or nearing its prime together but also has additional pieces that may be facing the inevitable aging curve and reduced production, or in Mike Richards’ case, a rigid contract that has an unfavorable effect on the club’s financial maneuverability.

So, how do the players see it? Where exactly is the balance between realizing that the team did not reach its goals and that changes must be made, while within the acknowledgement that with average luck the Kings would have been well within the playoff boundary as a team no postseason opponent would have wanted to face?

Anze Kopitar, on that balance:
I don’t know. I think there’s times where you have to take a step back to take a couple steps forward. Hopefully that’s the case with us. We can sit back and just realize what we lost and obviously come back stronger next year. The goal is going to be the same. The goals are not going to change and the expectation. The potential we have in this room, we know we can do it pretty much any year with the talent, the team, the character, I guess the experience, too. We know we can do it. It’s a matter of putting it together, playing consistent hockey and that’s what we were lacking this year. I don’t think we were consistent enough and that’s why we came short.

Dustin Brown, on whether something needs to be changed heading into next season:
I try to look at it objectively. I think there’s areas of our game where we need to get better. Individually, I need to be better. But at the same time, you don’t want to sit here and say ‘this team’s no good anymore,’ because you look at our group of guys that we’ve had and what we’ve done over the last three, four years. We’ve done a lot of really good things. I don’t think anyone in there is thinking we had a good year or we did what we wanted to do. But we weren’t very far off from getting to where we want to be and giving ourselves a chance. Again, you have to look at it objectively and try to get better and find ways. That’s the difference nowadays, those little tiny areas you can get better make a big difference. … You’ve got to stay the course. We have a good group. That’s been, I think, the biggest advantage we’ve had. Our group together is a good group, and you don’t want to mess with it too much. [Reporter: Have you guys thought about – you talked about getting better – what are those things, and how do you fix them?] Well, I think one thing, we lose it’s a reality check, right? We’ve been very successful the last three years. So again, you try to take the positive out of this. It might be a wakeup call for us. We’ve had those stretches in the middle of the year when we weren’t very good. You can talk about our overtime record or whatever you want to talk about. Those are games that ended up costing us down the stretch. You don’t lose your season against Calgary, that was all the games before that. There’s a lot of things. Just taking the time now to figure those out and being aware of them going forward.

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