Waking up with the Kings: November 16

Darryl Sutter has repeatedly said that the Kings are not using their injuries as an excuse, and there’s a good reason for that. Any type of acknowledgement of the impact of injuries on the team’s standing by the head coach could vindicate the strain of failing to collect two points and make certain losses acceptable. That’s obviously not what this club needs as it ventures to remain in the race, lying in the weeds, until a handful of key players return from injury. Los Angeles needs wins and points, and they received neither in a 4-1 loss to Colorado in a game that seemed to serve as a deflating rubber match of a road trip. Were the team to finish 2-2-1, they could look at five-of-10 points on the trip and a positive goal differential as a continued example of the team’s ability to tread water in the wake of its personnel challenges. Instead, at 1-3-1 and only three of a possible 10 points, the team heads home with no real tangible accomplishments and, despite their ability to park-and-ride, the remnants of perhaps their poorest performance during the five-game stretch fresh in their minds. There was little margin for error at the start of the season, and such margins have been reduced to a quark-thin divide between what will and won’t pass as a winning effort. On Tuesday in Denver, Los Angeles learned what happens when it doesn’t exhibit its strongest performance on the ice amidst these challenges.

After a special teams-dominant first period that yielded no goals and little even strength rhythm, the trajectory of the game was set by a pair of goals 22 seconds apart in the second. The first goal was scored on a Patrick Wiercioch wraparound and was not the byproduct of a scoring chance. Nic Dowd was stationed in front and did not leave his post to tend to Wiercioch, but that’s still probably the correct choice. Mikko Rantanen in the mid-slot and Carl Soderberg in the right circle are both more dangerously situated than a defenseman attempting a wraparound, and were Dowd to have been drawn down low, a higher-probability scoring chance would have likely been elicited. (On the other hand, Dowd could have also used his stick to impede the progress of an unchecked Wiercioch.) The second goal, which was the result of a turnover that occurred when Alec Martinez couldn’t connect with Devin Setoguchi along the boards during an attempted zone exit, followed Soderberg’s second faceoff win of the shift against Dowd. It’s difficult to focus negatively on the Dowd line’s performance. Despite a dash-four rating, it was still territorially the team’s best line at even strength and accounted for a power play goal that pulled the team within one late in the second period, and Dowd (+13 Corsi +/-), Brown (+10) and Setoguchi (+10) forged the clearest advantage in possession of all skaters.

Los Angeles needs all hands on deck during this stretch of depleted personnel, and they’re just not receiving consistently strong individual performances right now. Drew Doughty hasn’t played his best hockey, but he’s also been moved around to play with Brayden McNabb, Jake Muzzin, Alec Martinez, and now Derek Forbort (who ultimately played another assertive and confident game on Tuesday but is not the ideal player to match against the opposition’s top lines), and it’s not easy to establish regularity when there’s a revolving door of defensemen to his left. Muzzin and Martinez were fine possession-wise but also stung for the first two goals against and did not etch out a glowing trip, and offensively inclined players like Anze Kopitar, Tyler Toffoli and Teddy Purcell are yet to craft performances they’re particularly fond of. Again, it’s so key that the team simply remains within striking distance while its injured players heal, because this year’s team has something that its previous two incarnations did not: a viable and productive third line. It’s possible to foresee a modest level of success once players return, but this team’s got to find a way to build a bridge to that midway point.