Hollywood ending isn’t inevitable
Jonathan Quick was in a corner of the room, hemmed in, and all but growled when asked a perfectly reasonable question.
Is it natural that, after whipping through the West like a wildfire, the Los Angeles Kings are finally being tested? Is it natural that all of a sudden, this isn’t easy anymore?
“I felt we were tested pretty hard in the first, second and third round,” said Quick, after the Kings had lost a second consecutive game to the New Jersey Devils, 2-1, after taking a 3-0 lead in the Stanley Cup final.
“Just because we were able to come out on top doesn’t mean we weren’t tested. You look at all the games; three out of every four wins that we had in each series were one-goal games.
‘‘So if you don’t think we were tested in those series, you should be doing a different sport.”
If you discount empty-net goals, Quick is correct — the Kings’ path was easy in the big picture, and a series of narrowly won battles in the small. But things have changed a little.
After a 2-1 loss in Game 5 of the Cup final, though, the Kings have suddenly lost consecutive games in regulation for the first time since March, and have dropped as many games against the Devils as they dropped against Vancouver, St. Louis and Phoenix combined.
They were a game away from the Stanley Cup last Tuesday, and they still are. This isn’t inevitable anymore.
“Sure, there’s anxiety,” said winger Justin Williams, who scored the lone Los Angeles goal, and hit a post as well. “We haven’t lost two games in a row. We’ve played pretty hard. It’s the Stanley Cup finals; it isn’t supposed to be easy. I thought the game before we certainly weren’t good enough. Tonight, we just weren’t good enough by a little hair. It’s a game of inches. There’s battles going on all over the ice that just us players see, and we’re losing just a few more than we’re winning.
“They scored two goals, we scored one. They’re leaving with smiles on their face, we’re leaving pissed off.”
There are smiles on the Devils side, though they are cautious ones. In Game 5, the Devils blocked 20 shots and Los Angeles missed 14 and Martin Brodeur was there the rest of the time. The 40-year-old lion has quietly allowed one goal in regulation four times in the first five games, and his team has slowly come around in front of him. It looks an awful lot like how Brodeur held level against New York and Henrik Lundqvist in the conference final.
It was Quick who made a mistake Saturday night, firing a puck behind his net that Zach Parise jumped on and deposited in the net for the game’s critical first goal. Meanwhile, the Kings finished 29th in scoring in the regular season, and have now scored seven goals in regulation over the first five games. They made .075 per cent of their shots in the regular season; they are at .087 for the entire playoffs, but Brodeur has a .928 save percentage in the final.
“Right now we’re able to pull two tight games on our side, like they did in Game 1 and 2,” said Brodeur. “I think they’re so close to winning the Stanley Cup that I’m sure it’s getting to them a little bit, to be able to have all these chances and not capitalize on them.”
“You know, that’s the time of the year; you’re going to lose games, you’re going to win games,” said Quick, who has allowed one fewer goal in regulation than Brodeur through the first five games. “(Our confidence is the) same as after we swept St. Louis, same as after we beat (New Jersey) three in a row.”
“They’re going to award the Stanley Cup to somebody here in the next two games,” said Devils coach Pete DeBoer, whose team is now 10-1 in Games 4 through 7 in the postseason.
“There’s only two games left in a season where both teams are going on a hundred and probably ten games. So this is probably right where you want to be.”