“I look for the Kings to have a bounce-back year. They’ve played a lot of hockey over the last few years, especially Doughty and Kopitar and Quick. I look for them to rebound.” – Wayne Gretzky
Drew Doughty is coming off his longest summer vacation in six years, yet he hardly went anywhere. A quick jaunt to Las Vegas in June, where the finalist was robbed of his first Norris Trophy, but that hardly counts. The 25-year-old star took his family with him, he says, so he didn’t exactly Vegas it up like in 2014 — the year he won his second gold medal and his second Stanley Cup.
No, mostly the decorated D-man just hung around home, in London, Ont., or at his cottage with friends, and played more rounds of golf than summertime usually affords.
“I’m a 4.6 index, so that’s like a 6 handicap. I can play,” Doughty said in a recent sit-down. Like most recreational golfers, Doughty prefers to wager on the game.
“It’s more fun to play for something than nothing.”
That right there, dear reader, is both the Kings’ weapon and their Kryptonite. More than any other team, L.A. can be perplexing in its mediocrity when the games don’t hold weight and astonishing in their resilience when they do. Until 2014-15, when they were eliminated on the penultimate game of the regular season.
Doughty, as per custom, skated a game-high 29:53 that desperate night and his team still fell 3-1 to the Calgary Flames. The Kings finished 2014-15 with a 40-27-15 record and 95 points, the exact same record and point total they had in 2011-12 when they captured their first Cup. This time it wasn’t enough.
“It sucks. We were pissed off. Obviously embarrassed about it. We continually, season after season, leave it to the last minute to try and make the playoffs. With 30 games left, we finally start winning some games and try to sneak in there again,” Doughty says.
“It caught up with us. We had a sh—y start, then kinda started playing better. It was too little too late.”
Anze Kopitar concurs. “It left a sour taste,” the Kings’ best forward says. “We definitely don’t want to be in that position this year.”
Evidence suggests they won’t be.
The Slava Voynov debacle (and, to a lesser extent, GM Dean Lombardi’s missed opportunity to use a compliance buyout on Mike Richards in the summer of 2014) surely hindered the Kings’ title defence, but there were other factors. Kopitar believes the main one was fatigue.
In 2013-14, an Olympic year, Doughty himself played 110 games, not including pre-season. Seven core members of those Kings participated in Sochi.
“We played a lot of hockey in a short amount of time. Fatigue was definitely a factor,” Kopitar says. “We just weren’t consistent enough last year. We had too many ups and downs, and you just can’t have that. We had the urgency at the end. I thought we put together a pretty good run, but we just came up short.”
Doughty was rooting for the Blackhawks to win in June, figuring the championship pattern of Kings-Blackhawks-Kings-Blackhawks has a chance to live on. He believes a new overtime format and some new recruits will help his squad.
Trade acquisition Milan Lucic makes his Kings debut Wednesday versus San Jose. Lucic had just 44 points last season with the Bruins, but he’s playing for a new contract and already engaged (and defeated) Anaheim’s Josh Manson in a nasty fight this pre-season.
A longtime friend of Lucic’s, Doughty was pumped when he heard the trade news and the two began texting before training camp opened.
“I know Looch off the ice,” Doughty says. “We met at the Canada-Russia series when we were 17 years old, then we’ve had some Canadian Olympic camps together, so I’ve hung out with him there. A great player. He’ll be huge for the type of style we play. Everyone on our team will love him.”
Defenceman Christian Ehrhoff, too, will fit in well, Doughty figures. “He’s a very good player. Fast. Can shoot,” Doughty says. “He’s going to get lots of power play time.”
Statistically, 3-on-3 overtime could benefit the Kings more than any other team. L.A. had a league-worst .200 shootout win percentage in 2014-15, so the fewer shootouts, the better for L.A.
“The shootout is fun for the fans and stuff, but for teams losing in a shootout, it sucked,” Doughty says. “I know our team missed out on the playoffs because we lost about 10 games in shootouts last year. I like 3-on-3. It’ll make more goals happen.”
Fatigue and shootouts will not be excuses this year, and if the Kings can start swinging like there’s money riding on the regular season, they have as good a shot as anybody at that throne.