CALGARY — It’s been four years since Darryl Sutter so famously said, “It’s going to be a waste of eight days” for whoever played the Colorado Avalanche in the first round.
How perfectly appropriate then that Sutter sat in the Saddledome stands for Thursday’s regular-season finale between the last two teams he coached, the Flames and Kings.
He was there in support of one of his most beloved players, Anze Kopitar, whose Kings are very likely in line for the type of fate Sutter spoke of years earlier.
And when the Flames punctuated their 3-1 win over Los Angeles with a handshake line for the soon-to-be-retired Kings captain, it seemed like a precursor to what could be on tap four games later when the Avalanche are heavily favoured to put the punchless Kings out of their misery.
Count eight days from Sunday afternoon’s opener in Denver to figure out when the Kings’ season is likely to end.
Although wins by the Oilers and Ducks earlier in the evening solidified the West’s second wild-card spot for the Kings, the loss to the Flames served to punctuate a season marked by a late coaching change, a popgun offence and spotty goaltending.
“The best team in the league, but you know, playoffs,” said Kopitar, when asked after the game about a date with the Avs.
“I’m not gonna say anything can happen, but we'll go in, and we'll play hard, and we'll see where that takes us.”
The Kings enter the series against the Presidents' Trophy winner with the dubious distinction of entering the playoffs with just 22 regulation wins — an NHL record.
Despite facing an undermanned Flames squad whose long list of rookies included Arsenii Sergeev making his NHL debut, the Kings couldn’t solve the Russian netminder despite throwing 28 shots on net.
Playing in front of a crowd conflicted by the desire to remain 30th in the standings while also cheering for Sergeev, the Flames passed the Rangers in the standings and will now have the fourth-best odds of winning the draft lottery at 9.5 per cent.
With six minutes to go in a 1-1 game, Zayne Parekh put on a clinic along the wall, shielding the puck from Brandt Clarke before turning on a dime to face Anton Forsberg and rip the game-winner into the far corner. Joel Farabee’s 20th of the season found the empty net to cap the Flames' fourth-straight season out of the playoffs.
The Kings enter the post-season with points in eight of their last ten, which was needed for them to stave off late pushes from several other teams.
“I guess the second half of March into April we were pretty good to put ourselves in a position to be in the playoffs, and now this is a whole different animal,” said Kopitar, who received a standing ovation early in the evening when the Flames honoured him with a Jumbotron salute.
“The intensity ramps up. Everything ramps up. Every mistake, every little play magnifies now, and we're gonna have to go out there and compete and just work our asses off.”
Coach DJ Smith, who replaced Jim Hiller on an interim basis Mar. 1, knows the task at hand is a large one.
“For us, I don't think it matters whoever we're going to play, we'd be the underdog,” said Smith, who said his players were all aware that going into the third period tied 1-1, their playoff matchup had already been set.
“We know there's going to be spurts where they're going to be really, really good, but we're going to have to look at it and manage those times. They have five, six, seven of the best players in the world over there. But the one thing we've always been able to do is play defence. So we're going to have to defend real hard, and then when we get opportunities, we're going to have to sting them."
Smith said he’d convene with his staff before deciding whether he’d go with the experience of Darcy Kuemper for Game 1, or the hotter hand of Forsberg.
“I think at some point we're going to need everybody, whether it's guys that are in the lineup, out of the lineup, or both goalies,” he said.
“We're going to go with who we think is ready to win Game 1, and then we'll readjust after that.”
