Absolutely nothing is going right for the Los Angeles Kings in 2024. After an electric start to the campaign, Todd McLellan's team has lost 12 of 14 games to fall to 22-14-9 and fourth place in the Pacific Division.
After a ghastly 5-3 loss to the lowly Buffalo Sabres at home on Wednesday night, the head coach didn't hold back on his club's struggles.
“We’re maybe not playing our best, but the stupidity that went into that loss is beyond explainable,” McLellan admitted, according to The La Times' Helene Elliott.
“I could come up here and tell you, ‘Hey in the past we’ve been close, maybe we didn’t get some luck around the net,’ but I haven’t, until now, been able to come in and say, ‘Boy, we played really dumb.’ And that’s what we did.”
It's a coach who has clearly seen enough. And longtime defenseman Drew Doughty went even further after the defeat.
“We got guys in this room too worried about themselves and worried about their points,” asserted the two-time Stanley Cup champion.
“We get a 3-1 lead tonight and guys start thinking it’s a cookie night and we stop playing the way we know how to play, have an awful second period, and then aren’t much better in the third. It’s about the team. It’s not about yourself, and a lot of guys on this team need to realize that.”
It's all going off the rails for a Kings team that looked like a true Stanley Cup contender at the beginning of the season, but now are in serious jeopardy of missing the playoffs in April.
Kings blow lead to drop fourth of five games
LA has won just once in its last five tries after the dismal loss, and scored only 10 goals in that stretch. Although it was considered a slump in the early stages, the extended struggles have revealed a deeper problem in California.
“What I see is we’re not playing as a team right now. Worry about scoring goals too much and not buying into the stuff that made us successful the first 30, 35 games of the year, and it’s frustrating,” said captain Anze Kopitar, who scored the Kings’ first goal on Wednesday.
“We’re going to have to correct it, and we’re going to have to correct it in a hurry.”
Time is running out for the Kings, who have 37 games left in the 2023-24 season and are barely hanging onto a wildcard berth in the Western Conference.
Things won't get any easier for this team down the stretch; they will embark on a three-game, pre-All-Star break road trip that begins against the powerhouse Colorado Avalanche in Denver on Friday night.
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