Lol at anyone questioning Drew F'n Doughty. Elite player.....
He's one of the precious few reasons we even had a shot, but the boxscore watchers won't see that.
For the series he was 57% CF, which was nearly 11% relative to team. No other LA d-man--not even his
partners--came close. Next closest was Dion at 50%.
Relative zone start ratio of nearly -10%, worst on the Kings, being hard matched against the top lines of other teams.
Yet dude completely tilted the ice and shut down the competition when he was on. We definitely needed more scoring from our top guys, and you can include Doughty in that crowd, but to pretend he's the reason we lost when he did as much creation from the back end as he could given the minutes he got is rough. Look at the flow of the game in G2 when he was missing vs. the other games. It's not an accident.
Fair to criticize him like anyone else for lack of offense in this series, but there are about 10 forwards I'd rip before Drew, given he was mostly on an island by himself on the back end. Fair to say we wanted more from him offensively given the powerplays. To suggest this hurt his future contract? Get real. If anything, real GMs saw the Kings with him on and off the ice, and realized he will be worth every penny.