Following two straight losses which have kept them toward the bottom of the Western Conference, the Los Angeles Kings are looking for solutions to end their homestand on a positive note and break a pattern of frustration which has lasted for most of the season.
“There’s different ways of not finding success on any given night,” head coach Peter Laviolette said after Wednesday’s practice. “And I think we’ve kind of fallen into that a little bit.”
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The most recent game, last night’s 3-0 loss to the Nashville Predators, featured a wide range of shortcomings which doomed them, and Laviolette bluntly acknowledged several of those.
“We gave up odd man rushes, and [I could] tell you if we just give up the odd man rushes, we’re going to clean everything up, but last night it spread across quite a few subjects,” he said. “I thought we were spread out. We turned the puck over in the neutral zone. I don’t think we defended well enough. So there was things that we did that you address today and put it in front of them, kind of a point blank meeting, and say, ‘Listen, unless we clean these things up, it’s not going to get better.'”
Currently, the team is trying to strike a balance between shaking off losses and finding the right level of accountability to correct past mistakes. Defenseman Joel Edmundson spoke to the former, while Laviolette discussed the latter.
“Sometimes things don’t go your way, and it’s easy to beat yourself up,” Edmundson said. “But, you know, [let’s] come in today, have a good practice, good energy, put everything in the past. All we can do is move on to the next game.”
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“At the end of the day, we’ve got to move on and get ready for a game tomorrow,” Laviolette countered. “But I do think that inside of that, there’s got to be some accountability to what it is that we do the night before, so that’s what you do the next morning when guys come in … it could be [changing] ice time. It could be [taking a player] out of the lineup. It could be one-on-one meetings. It could be just talking to a player. It could be video. It could be team video. There’s a bunch of different ways you can go with accountability.”
The Kings are the NHL’s oldest team, and their age has clearly shown in certain aspects of their game such as team speed. At the same time, they hope that their veteran experience can help them navigate the challenges that they currently face. Kevin Fiala’s impending return can potentially provide a boost as well.
But to someone as results-oriented as Laviolette, very little of that matters if the Kings can’t turn whatever strengths they may have into wins.
“The bottom line is that what we’re doing isn’t good enough,” he said. “Younger player, veteran player, veteran group, it’s not good enough, and we’ve got to account for that and straighten that out. Can’t just keep rolling. We’ve got to move in a different direction here, and so, like I said, the morning’s got a purpose, and now you’re in preparation to try and move forward.”
The Kings continue their season tomorrow night at 7 p.m. against the New York Islanders, for the sixth game of a seven-game homestand.
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