Angeles Analysis – An Open Forum

Alright, Insiders.

I’d like to get a feel here in one place for what you all are thinking as we hit today in Montreal. I think that the most difficult thing to really drill down on is that we know how good this group CAN be. The Kings were suffocatingly good in Ottawa. They’ve been suffocatingly good in other games as well, but far too frequently we’ve seen that drop-off the next game, or a couple of games down the road. We’ve seen a number of games that you could call a blueprint for how the team can be successful, and others that have been throwaways in that department. It’s not simply a matter of beating the teams the standings say you should beat, either. Of the 14 wins the Kings have this season, 7 are against teams that are currently in a playoff spot and 7 are against teams that are currently not in a playoff spot. There’s no easy game in the NHL, regardless of opponent, and the breakdown of the schedule to date would show that to not be a factor. That’s the thing with consistency, though. It’s not always explainable.

Anze Kopitar was blunt last night – “Not good enough.” He addressed the consistency issues as well, talking about how last year is last year and this season’s Kings need to bring it every night to find the consistency they’re in search of. Todd McLellan used the word “disappointing” to describe the play last night. Last night wasn’t a game he and the staff saw coming – he used words he hasn’t in a while to describe the team’s play, which makes the loss against Toronto different than disappointing ones against say Seattle, Winnipeg or Pittsburgh earlier in the season. You can pinpoint just a few times last year when a game was broken down similarly and not yet this season have we had one in this vein.

Now, Toronto is in the past, but the Kings have four games remaining on a road trip they’d like to find some results from. As we approach 30 games into the season, referencing last season’s team is less and less of an exercise that’s worth doing, but last season’s team thrived on the road and thrived on banking points from trips like this. It’s an opportunity, despite the travel that creates a difficult back-to-back over the weekend, to put points in the bank and try to build off of it.

So, with that in mind, I’d like to open up the room. Open forum in the comments here. If you were the general manager, the head coach or a player on this team, what’s your first step towards getting the ship consistently on course? Your FIRST step. And be realistic…..you know the circumstances. The Kings have $1,300,000+ in cap space available with an open roster spot. More than half of the 32 teams in the league have less than a minimum roster player’s worth of cap space, per CapFriendly. Amazing quote, off the record, from an NHL General Manager in Elliotte Friedman’s 32 Thoughts piece from this week – “We’d all like to make a (bleeping) trade,” one GM said. “But there’s no room to do it.”

The point of this exercise here is not just to react to 60 minutes of play. That game is behind us and when you wake up in the morning, you wake up with less of an emotional response and many times a clearer vision. The point here is to look at the larger picture of the Kings, where they stand and where the team can go forward from this point. As of this writing, the Kings occupy a playoff spot based on points and sit percentage points (.004 behind Edmonton and .006 behind Calgary) out of a spot by points percentage, with a disparity in games played currently the difference.

I see it all after every setback and that includes takes from credentialed media members, but 5 trades, 4 recalls/senddowns and 7 firings over the next 24 hours are not reasonable. I think the easy part is identifying and sorting out the issues and that’s the part that’s been done. Suggesting unreasonable yet wide-ranging solutions is the thought-provoking part. Finding solutions that are both doable and impactful is the hard part and sometimes those solutions aren’t the ones you really want to hear.

So, what is your first step? Is there a personnel alignment or reconfiguration that you feel would help the team find the path they’d like to, with or without roster moves? Is it a focus on one area of the game specifically that is continuously below standard? Is there a missing ingredient that is reasonably available, whether it be internal or external? Or might you stay the course, seeing what the team can be at its best, with the focus on the aforementioned consistency? Or maybe it’s something else……floor is yours, Insiders.

I look forwards to reading. Sort of.

Will have a feature story of some sort coming later on today, plus a recap from tonight’s Ontario Reign game. To be frank, the feature is not one that dives particularly deep into an issue or presents a solution, but one of a few concepts we’ve had in the bank for a bit now and tonight is the night it makes sense to post as it pertains to the schedule. I hope you’ll enjoy the read nonetheless. Talk down below!