GOLDEN LININGS PLAYBOOK

LOS ANGELES, CA -- When the Los Angeles Kings step to the ice for their 2021 season opener, it will end a space of over 300 days since they last played a regular-season NHL game. I covered their last contest on March 11, a 3-2 triumph over the Ottawa Senators on a surreal evening that dripped of the impending pause to the season that occurred 48 hours after the final whistle due to the prevalence of COVID-19. Though the team found its stride over the final quarter of the truncated 2019-20 season, a poor start while amid trying to find traction under Head Coach Todd McLellan’s system excluded them for the 24-game extended Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Given the success of the lowest three qualifiers in the expanded tournament – the Montreal Canadiens, Chicago Blackhawks and Arizona Coyotes all registered first-round series victories – you wonder how Los Angeles would have fared given they hit the pause in play with a seven-game winning streak with five wins against playoff qualifiers and getting quality goaltending (nine goals-against in those seven games).

The chasm between games prevents any continuity between the team’s solid play in March and how they will start this season. Far too much time has elapsed to expect a rousing start to another shortened season, not from a learning perspective but from a team chemistry and execution standpoint. In normal times, a strong close by a team out of the playoff race and with no pressure on is not an indicator of progression in the following season. With that said, there were positive signs over the final quarter – the emergence of Matt Roy as a reliable top-four defenseman and continued progression in Alex Iafallo’s offensive game. The biggest positive was getting goaltending that kept them in games and gave them opportunity to win when outplayed with the additional bonus of receiving it from both the goalie of the present, Jonathan Quick and the one of the near-future, Cal Petersen.

At the start of last season, I asked McLellan what success would look like in his initial campaign and he responded with a single word: “growth.” And while growth has been demonstrated in the prior points noted, the organization’s (read: GM Rob Blake’s) steadfast approach of sticking to The Plan back to contention impairs the ability for this team to progress to contender status for the 2021 season. There are too many things that would have to go right, too many ifs and maybes, and too many players would have to emerge without any further regression by others to put this team in position to win its first playoff game since 2014.

And if you’re not comfortable with the approach, you need to get on board quickly. The lack of activity in the off-season (and yes, there was significant dead cap space but plenty of actual cap space to improve area of needs), aside from the Olli Maatta trade, combined with the signals that there is no hurry to bring forward its top prospects begs the question of how this team will remain competitive in a realigned West Division.

There is stability with the Core Five – Anze Kopitar, Dustin Brown, Jeff Carter, Drew Doughty and Quick appear to be going nowhere for varying reasons (true core player, no interest in trade market) – but if the plan is to start the season with essentially the same roster as the one that ended the last 2019-20 campaign, the organization is clearly asking for another season of patience from the fan base.

Featured in last season’s final days was the debut of Gabriel Vilardi and the infancy of his NHL career was productive, albeit in a very small sample size (7 points in 10 games). Assuming the off-season was effective from a training and strength perspective for the 21-year-old forward (core strength was an area of focus), there is a legitimate offensive threat behind Kopitar. If you pencil in Kopitar for a point-a-game season – a fair assumption as he produced 62 in 70 games on a poor offensive team – getting Vilardi to a .75 point per game (approximately 60 points in a full 82 games season) would give this team a second line threat not seen since the days of ‘That 70’s Line’ that iced a healthy Carter in the middle.

The challenge of forecasting Vilardi’s output is tied to the options of linemates available. Assuming Blake does not reverse course and get in the bidding for Mike Hoffman or dial up Kelly McCrimmon in Vegas to see if Max Pacioretty or Jonathan Marchessault can be had, you’re looking at Trevor Moore and Martin Frk taking a regular shift with Vilardi to start the season.

Frk, while the more gifted of the two and with a renowned powerful shot, has only been a legitimate scoring threat at the AHL level. While his initial days as a King saw him register six goals in 17 games, he did so with a 23.1 shooting percentage, more than double his success rate he saw during his Detroit tenure.

Moore is a speedy smart forward, but L.A. is one of few NHL franchises where he would appear on the depth chart as a top-six winger. So, the challenge for Vilardi to produce as a second line center this season may be through no fault of his own.

The same offensive challenges are manifest on the blueline; despite getting surprising production from Sean Walker last season, the defense was one of the lowest-scoring contingents in the NHL and doesn’t look to improve drastically. Maatta’s production was equivalent to the departed Ben Hutton, and Kale Clague could move the needle a bit but appears to be a third pair blueliner. The sole hope for significant offensive production from the defense pivots around the team’s highest paid player, Mr. Doughty.

It’s hard to fathom that the once-precocious kid who helped lead this team out of the Stanley Cup-less wilderness recently turned 31 years old and while that number is not an advanced NHL age, Doughty has played more than 1,000 NHL regular-season and post-season games combined (had he played a full 82 game 2019-20 season and he would have eclipsed 1,000 regular-season games). That’s a lot of intense nightly battles for a player fueled by his emotions and gives credence to the theory that the elite defenseman that has patrolled Staples Center ice may never resurface. Maybe it is a case of having only so many seasons of elite play in one body – he didn’t miss a regular-season game through five seasons from 2014 to 2019 – because the last two seasons were at best mediocre and the excuse some use of the team being a bottom feeder to explain the unsightly statistics of his last 150 games just doesn’t cut it.

A player of Doughty’s magnitude (and paycheck) should play well despite not having quality around him. He should have been the standard the organization could point to and say, “even in the worst of times, he was our best,” but instead he regressed to a level of play that resulted in Roy being voted the team’s best defenseman by the L.A. media last season – an occurrence that should be a positive but is a negative. If it’s too much to ask Doughty to be an impactful offensive defenseman like Roman Josi, John Carlson or Victor Hedman, it’s not too much to ask to play above the level that has one online betting site peg his odds of winning the Norris Trophy at 40-1.

Keeping this roster at status quo does not lead to progression in the standings for the 2021 season. Though the lack of proven offensive impact players lessens expectations for the coming season in Los Angeles, the better news is McLellan’s system did work as the season progressed. The Kings drove play through their possession game and both produced quality shots and limited their opponents but the inability to finish plays – either through bad shooting luck or lack of skill – resulted in a sub-.500 season.

But there is an alternate approach to the coming season that would be of greater benefit and accelerate the franchise’s progression back to contention. While there is some risk, the uniqueness of a shortened season played with divisional play only makes it far more plausible.

Let’s call it a Golden Linings Playbook.

The key to the Playbook (it’s an aggressive one) is to ignore birth certificates – allow the best 23 (or 28) players to form your roster, including all the treasured and talked about prospects.

If Quinton Byfield is your second-best center and Arthur Kaliyev your most dynamic scorer, so be it. The usual, safe strategy to return young players to the juniors ranks because “they’re not ready” doesn’t carry the same weight given the one-time-only opportunity to play a 56-game, reduced travel schedule. The usual fear that an 82-game season with extensive travel throughout North America will wear down and overwhelm inexperienced young players isn’t present and with the prospect of a few extra roster spots available that would allow the presence of youngsters furthers this Playbook.

With respect to Byfield and Kaliyev and the inability to play them in the minors due to age restrictions, the divisional alignment gives them a full season to acclimate to NHL play. For Byfield in particular, there is an added bonus of practicing against and learning from Kopitar while not having to face Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and Elias Pettersson. The teams replacing Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver are strong, but they don’t possess the firepower in the middle that the departing teams do (Tyler Seguin is recovering from multiple surgeries in Dallas, the Blues are defensively strong but lack dynamic center play and Minnesota is presently showing Marcus Johansson at 1C). Of the divisional teams expected to make the post-season, only Colorado has demonstrated strength at center (Nathan MacKinnon and Naz Kadri dominate many nights) and the non-contenders hold that status because of underwhelming center talent, the likelihood of Byfield being overmatched consistently in this unique season is minimized.

Further supporting the Playbook is the environment in which the season will be staged throughout. While not to the level of what we saw in the 2020 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs with 24 teams in a bubble, the environment will be far more controlled (a word loved by sports organizations) than in a normal regular-season. Players will essentially go to the rink and then return home when playing in Los Angeles and will have very limited options on the road (pre-selected hotels and in-hotel dining/restaurants, no socializing, certainly no rookie parties in Vegas).

As for downside risk, what if the rigors of a shortened season at the highest level of hockey still proved to be too much for the prospects and resulted in underachievement like Jack Hughes and Kaapo Kakko experienced?

Again, the controlled environment with no fans in attendance shield and allow them to learn without the negativity of home crowd discouragement should the team’s play result in another subpar season. Skating off the ice after a 5-1 loss which extends a losing streak without hearing it from 17,000 fans can cushion the process of learning painful lessons of an NHL rookie season. Given that media interaction will be limited to Zoom calls, the youngsters can defer to the veterans for the task of answering tough questions of another prospective losing season. Nothing can be done about social media trolling during a rough rookie season, but that’s professional sports in the 21st century.

From a coaching perspective, I seriously doubt handing the keys of the Ferrari to McLellan a year earlier to experiment on the equivalent a hockey test racetrack would receive any pushback.

The argument against having Byfield and Kaliyev spending the entire season in L.A. may be moot given the status of the options normally afforded to prospects ineligible to play in the AHL. TSN’s Rick Westhead threw out this nugget on Twitter late last week that would close one avenue.

If the OHL does not stage a season, the only viable option at this point would be to place Byfield and Kaliyev in a second-tier European league, a tricky proposition given those leagues have commenced their seasons. Even if a deal could be structured to add them to a foreign roster, it is really a better option than keeping them with the team to integrate with their future teammates?

What’s the downside of having kids play an NHL season resulting that similar results to the 2019-20 season? If they placed in the bottom five again, the organization is staring straight at the possibility of landing the elite defensive prospect (your choice of Brandt Clarke, Owen Power or Luke Hughes) they still lack in the draft lottery.

The answer to two questions gives further support to the Golden Linings Playbook.

From a management standpoint:

Byfield and Kaliyev specific – if an OHL can be staged, how would playing a 40-game juniors season do more for development than playing a 56-game, limited travel NHL schedule?

From a fan standpoint:

Which would you rather see as your opening night second line behind Iafallo-Kopitar-Brown?

Choice A: Moore-Vilardi-Frk
Choice B: Kaliyev-Byfield-Vilardi

If the Playbook is deployed, it would conjure up memories of the pre-championship Chicago Blackhawks of the 2007-08 season for me. I recall being at ice level watching warmups prior to a late season Chicago-Los Angeles game, these were the days when still-teenagers Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews were establishing themselves and the balance of the core was still forming. The Blackhawks missed the post-season and were a below average defensive team, but I could see that the skill on display was to be reckoned with soon.

I am not drawing parallels between Toews and Byfield or Kane to any of the Kings young wingers, but Chicago’s organizational willingness to expose its elite youth to NHL play early paid off in three championships for the organization within a few seasons, so it’s not so far-fetched for Los Angeles to consider opening the Golden Linings Playbook.