There's a lot of "could" for everyone. The difference is the negativity here towards the Kings vs. people putting together best case scenarios for everyone else.
I thought Edmonton would be a contender last year....but look what happened. I thought it would also be the year that Calgary took a step forward...womp womp. Sometimes, the shiny new toys are what they are, sometimes they're worse. Sometimes what you think is potential is overperformance. Sometimes a team or a player looks unstoppable once their team is out, like Arizona being unbeatable at the end of the previous season only to end up back in the lottery, or McDavid (I DO think he's the best player in the league) putting up a ****load of points in garbage time when selling out for offense every shift and his teammates literally saying they're going to pad his stats.
People act like misfortune only befalls the Kings and it's getting really ****ing old. Not so much at you, just a general observation.
The Kings have a razor-thin margin for error and misfortune, but so does literally everyone else in the division to various degrees.
Hell, I guess it's unpopular to mention around here now, but what if Karlsson comes in and replicates a couple of his off seasons in Ottawa--going near PPG but being awful defensively even relative to his teammates? That's possible. What if Vlasic--who had a little bit of a step back year--continues to decline instead of bouncing back? What if Burns, instead of being hte Norris-winning net impact player reverts to the sloppy turnover machine who just gets to the wrong part of the ice faster? All of these things are just as possible. We can argue over degrees of likelihood all day but I'm pretty sick of people throwing dirt on the Kings' casket like this is the year all the over 30s die at once while repeatedly praising the Sharks whose core is several years older.
Sort of like the whole instagram thing. Everyone puts up their great pictures, where it's all fun, smiles, looking good. You get jealous. Why is my life not that? Then there's an actual messy reality somewhere behind those pictures where everything probably isn't perfect. Of course as Kings fans, we know
all of our warts, inside and out. If they don't win, the bad is the only thing we talk about. 2012 and 2014 were not perfect teams. They were on the razor's edge many times, in the regular season or the playoffs. We're in a bit of a Kings bubble here though, so, we might exaggerate the negative, since the Kings are what we know best. At this time last year, if someone said Carter would miss 55 games, it is season over, get ready for the draft. Yes, long term, that would've been better than getting swept in round 1. However, coaches and players believe in themselves despite adversity, and they were a couple points from 2nd in the division. Yes, Kopitar played a ton, took more faceoffs than everyone else on the team combined, and put up numbers he won't do again, but that's because Carter was out, there was no 3rd line center, and Kopitar was it. If Carter is good to go, and Kempe can get better, hopefully Kopitar's numbers all go down. If Kopitar is at his normal 70-75 points, and Carter is around 65, that's probably a good thing.
Since everyone seems to be on the Calgary bandwagon, it will probably come down to either Calgary or LA for a playoff spot. Since 03-04, if the Flames get in, the Kings have been out, and vice versa. Especially the last couple times, like 14-15 when the Flames literally eliminated the Kings and got a spot in the same game. Last time the Kings and Flames made it in the same year was 92-93.
