Are the Kings playoff frauds?
After Wednesday’s 2-1 overtime win against the St. Louis Blues, the Los Angeles Kings have slid into the second wild card spot in the Western Conference, one point up on the Nashville Predators and San Jose Sharks. On one hand, the Kings have admirably stayed in the thick of the playoff race despite losing forward Kevin Fiala to the season-ending injury he suffered at the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics. On the other hand, though, it’s hard to be too impressed with Los Angeles’ season so far.
Firstly, the Kings are taking advantage of a shallow Western Conference to keep themselves on the postseason bubble. Their 78 points through 74 games would have them effectively eliminated in the East. They’re also sporting a pretty rough minus-26 goal differential, and are one of just five teams in the entire NHL to have scored fewer than 200 goals so far this season.
On Thursday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, hosts Tyler Yaremchuk and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton discussed whether or not the Kings would be a worthy playoff team.
Tyler Yaremchuk: The reason why the title of the show is “Are the L.A. Kings frauds?” is because I really think they are, Hutts. They’ve played 74 games this season and they only have 19 regulation wins. Think about that, less than one third of their games are being won in regulation, and yet here they are holding on to a playoff spot. They’ve won 30 games total on the year and they have 18 loser points. Tack those loser points on to the loss column, and they are 30-44 on the year. It is no debate that they are absolutely frauds. I know they’re getting close to a 50% chance to make the playoffs. They play the Preds tonight, that’s a massive game for them. They could absolutely get in. I actually think their 39.5% playoff chance is pretty low considering where they are at this point in the season. But this is one of those teams that, if they get in, they are going to get absolutely smoked by the Colorado Avalanche.
Carter Hutton: This is a concerning team. I look at their back end and it’s just old and slow, and a lot of players that have had good mileage on them and played well and have had good careers. Joel Edmundson is a good friend of mine, I love him, but when he’s playing the minutes he’s playing, and I think Brandt Clarke has a lot of upside to him, but the way this team is built is just not to win right now.
You can catch the full discussion and the rest of Thursday’s episode here…