“I don’t plan on playing just seven more games.”
Playing in his 20th and final season in the NHL, that was the blatant remark from Los Angeles Kings captain Anze Kopitar following a 5-4 overtime loss to the Nashville Predators on April 2, as the Kings remained on the outside looking in.
Kopitar didn’t just say that he spoke it into existence. Since that quote, the Kings strung together five wins in a row (their longest winning streak of the season), three of which were regulation wins — which is saying a lot for a team that has only collected 22 on the season — and punched their ticket to the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the fifth-straight season.
“It’s awesome,” forward Trevor Moore said after the Kings handled the Seattle Kraken 5-3 to clinch. “It was dicey there for a while, but I’m really proud of our group for sticking together, believing in ourselves, and going on this run.”
Playoffs are the goal for every team every season. Throughout all the trials and tribulations that this season brought the Kings, the one thing that remained constant was to do it for Kopitar. Regardless of everything else, find a way to get to the playoffs and give Kopitar one last dance.
“That’s what it’s about,” forward Quinton Byfield said. “You want to do it for one another, but at the beginning of the year, we talked about it, we wanted to give Kopi another shot for what he’s done for the organization. It’s the least we could do.”
After another bitter ending to last season following a fourth playoff exit at the hands of the Edmonton Oilers, the question was how this team could improve to be able to make it over the hump this season. Despite that goal in the back of their minds, nothing the Kings displayed on the ice throughout this season provided any confidence in that.
The Kings’ playoff chances were at 95% before the season started. That number dropped to a whopping 6% on March 6 when the Kings sat three points out of the second wild-card spot with no games in hand. That number jumped back up to 89% entering last night’s game against the Kraken.
The fluctuation in those percentages is a true testament to what the Kings were this season: A mediocre team all season, just good enough to hang in the mix, competing in an abysmal Pacific Division. A team that was good enough to stretch what seemed like every game to overtime and pick up so-called loser points to stay afloat.
It got to a point where it looked so bleak that the Kings could no longer continue to run with head coach Jim Hiller at the helm. If the Kings hadn’t promoted D.J Smith to interim head coach at the time they did, we probably aren’t talking about the playoffs right now.
Related: Kings’ Playoff Hopes Still Achievable With 9 Games Left
Change is what allowed this group to figure it out long enough to make a difference. The additions of both Artemi Panarin and Scott Laughton provided much-needed stability to a team that lost Kevin Fiala and Andrei Kuzmenko. The youthful energy provided by guys like Jared Wright, Taylor Ward, and Samuel Helenius gave the Kings a second engine on most nights. The newfound impact and confidence guys like Adrian Kempe, Quinton Byfield, and Trevor Moore found under Smith.
The ability for Anton Forsberg to come in and perform like a number-one goaltender while things were rough for Darcy Kuemper. Or how about a change of pace? A change of style? The physicality and aggressiveness Smith instilled forced this team to go after it and create plays rather than sit back and wait for things to happen.
It’s one thing to make the playoffs, and it’s another thing to make noise in them, which is what this club set out to do last July. No one’s expecting the Kings to do anything this postseason and for good reason. But you know what they say: anything can happen in the playoffs, you just have to get in. Is a Cinderella story in the cards for Kopitar’s last hurrah? Eighth-seed teams that squeak into the playoffs have made noise before, including the group that brought the city of Los Angeles its first Stanley Cup back in 2012.
How It Could Shake Out
No one wants to play the wagon that is the Colorado Avalanche, who ran away with the league from puck drop in October. The way it currently stands, the Kings will be the first team to get a taste of Avalanche playoff hockey. However, there are still two games left for the Kings against the Vancouver Canucks and Calgary Flames as well as a chance to give themselves a better fate than meeting the Avalanche in Round 1.
If the Kings remain in the second wild-card spot, they will face the Avalanche.
If the Kings who are only a point behind the Utah Mammoth, can jump up to the first wild-card spot, than the Kings could be facing either the Vegas Golden Knights, Anaheim Ducks, or Edmonton Oilers.
I think it’s safe to say that the Kings don’t want to see the Oilers in Round 1, unless the other option is the Avalanche. It doesn’t seem to matter whether the Kings are the better team or not, when it comes to the Oilers in Round 1, they just can’t get it done.
What would most people like to see? I think the obvious answer is getting to witness the Freeway Faceoff in Round 1 and see the Kings and Ducks battle for Southern California.
Regardless of who the Kings play, it will be a battle in which they probably aren’t the favorites. But all that should do is motivate the Kings to show they can compete, and all they intend to do is show exactly that.
“I don’t think people are gonna expect us right now to get a bunch done, but we’re gonna be a tough out. We’re gonna play real hard,” Smith said.
