Six games before the playoffs, the Los Angeles Kings were on the outside looking in. That they would make the top eight in the Western Conference and progress to the tournament wasn't a sure thing. Some wins and some other results going their way saw them sneak in as the eighth seed in what looked to be the stronger of the two conferences - the West featured league front-runners Vancouver and St Louis, the perennially-dangerous Detroit and Chicago, whom many thought were dark horses to have a playoff explosion.
How often have we heard that tried-and-true cliche, the one about how, no matter how you qualify for the playoffs, if you make it, you're a shot.Simply put, you only have to be in it to win it! That the NHL's best team could, possibly, be the eighth seed. Sure, it's possible...always possible, but how likely? I certainly didn't think the Kings would do much damage. I'd seen them play twice in January, and neither game was particularly exciting. They struggled to score in both losses, and would have probably lost by more than they did had it not been for Jonathan Quick. Alone amongst the Kings roster at that time, Quick looked like he could win a Stanley Cup.
Things happened. New coach Daryl Sutter, installed in favour of Terry Murray before thirty games had fallen by the wayside in the 2011-12 season, finally got his system to click. The Kings bought in. Quick got even better, to the point where he was probably the best goalie in the league, even better than the St Louis tandem and Henrik Lundqvist in New York. There was talk of trading captain Dustin Brown. It didn't happen. The Kings did send D Jack Johnson to Columbus in favour of disgruntled F Jeff Carter. To my way of thinking, the two events were the trade and non-trade that won the Stanley Cup for Los Angeles. In the series-deciding sixth game, Brown had a three-point night and Carter scored two goals. That's validation for both pulling the trigger and deciding against it. The Kings front office played it smart, and are reaping the rewards now.
From maligned and on the trade block in LA, Brown, the Kings captain became only the second American to hold the Stanley Cup aloft as team leader. Jettisoned from Philadelphia, unhappy in Columbus and traded to Los Angeles to be reunited with his buddy, another ex-Flyer, Mike Richards, Carter tasted ultimate success after a poor season in C-Bus, where not even Rick Nash could lift the Jackets from the NHL's doldrums.
In the playoffs, the Kings beat, in order, the first-ranked (Vancouver), second-ranked (St Louis) and third-ranked (Phoenix) teams in the Western Conference, then went 3-0 and cruised home to win the franchise's first Stanley Cup in forty-five years, putting away a New Jersey Devils team who discovered that the least-lethal power play in Stanley Cup Playoff history could come alive and hurt them if given the opportunity. The Devils' Steve Bernier was called (and ejected) for a brutal, nonsensical boarding call eleven minutes into the first period of Game Six, gifting the Kings a five-minute major. The boys in black and white found the net three times in 3:58, and set in motion a 6-1 rout that ended in feverishly epic pandemonium inside Staples Centre.
For Quick, Conn Smythe Trophy winner for Playoff MVP - well deserved, and deservedly unanimous - and Carter and Brown and others, like the Slovenian rocket Anze Kopitar, rugged Jarret Stoll, gold medal-winning Drew Doughty, the bloodied Rob Scuderi, another ex-Flyer Simon Gagne, Dustin Penner, Colin Fraser and more, this was a team with so many good stories. The team itself was a story, their transformation from Murray to Sutter, the late-arriving Carter and Quick showing why he's the best goalie in the league heading into the 2012-13 season.
And so the 2011-12 NHL Season ends, and the league's best team, it's deserving champion, is an eighth seed who lost only once on the road, with a goalie who continued to baffle opposition skaters and star players who stood up when they had to, turning scoring playoff hat-tricks and game-winning goals into an art form. And, in the process, they proved the old adage true: you only need to be in it to win it. Win it, the Kings did.
Talk about a team of destiny. Congratulations, Los Angeles, 2012 Stanley Cup Champions. Is it October yet?
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