GDT: 2020-21 season LA Kings vs Colorado Avalanche @7:00pm 1/19/21

[KINGS17]

This roster just isn't going to score enough goals to be a playoff team, and the defense is suspect.

 

[redcard]

This roster just isn't going to score enough goals to be a playoff team, and the defense is suspect.

I think the defense isn't going to prevent enough goals to be a playoff team, and the offense is suspect.

 

[Steve Zissou]

More games incoming against the Minnesota Wild... must resist the urge to unzip my pants.

 

[kingsholygrail]

Avs, Blues, Blues, Wild, Wild.. Losing today kept us within 1pt of the Blackhawks, who also still don't have a win, but got their first OTL. Dallas hasn't played yet.

 

[MBH]

Kopi craps the bed the whole game bam 2 assists. LOL. Points just seem to stick with good players no matter how crappy they play. Onto the next game.

First unit powerplay.

 

[kilowatt]

First unit powerplay.

One of his assists was on Athanasiou's goal. If you ask Faust and Fox, it was a great play. If instead you were watching the game with your own eyeballs, you saw one millimeter of Kopitar's tape job carress the puck for one brief moment, leading to an assist.

Kopitar looked like shit tonight. Top line was skating through mud.

 

[Steve Zissou]

Kopitar looked like shit tonight. Top line was skating through mud.

TMac needs to juggle that ‘top line’ asap.

It would appear the ‘off-season’ was not kind to Brown, Kopitar, and Doughty.

 

[kingsholygrail]

TMac needs to juggle that ‘top line’ asap.

It would appear the ‘off-season’ was not kind to Brown, Kopitar, and Doughty.

Kopitar is in perfect January form.

 

[Ray Martyniuk]

it’s truly amazing what you can see in your crystal ball about a 19 and a 20 year old. You probably would’ve traded Datsyuk and Zetterburg in like 02 too.

Also remember Tyler Myers won the Calder and Ghost looked good for a year or 2. DeAngelo on the Rangers has gone from 50 point Dman to taxi squad.

And Lombardi was so in love with toughness that he took Teubert instead of Myers. At this point Nousiainen and Spence don't turn into Stars...Perhaps with 3-4 years in the Minors Spence turns into Voynov

 

[Skinnyjimmy08]

Is there any untapped offensive potential with Mikey Anderson??? I was looking at previous years stats and saw he actually put up decent points in NCAA

 

[Raccoon Jesus]

Kopi craps the bed the whole game bam 2 assists. LOL. Points just seem to stick with good players no matter how crappy they play. Onto the next game.

Well, that's because he's an elite player tapering off. The brain is still there. ONe was garbage though haha.

A 75% Kopitar is still our best player until guys emerge.

it’s truly amazing what you can see in your crystal ball about a 19 and a 20 year old. You probably would’ve traded Datsyuk and Zetterburg in like 02 too.

Also remember Tyler Myers won the Calder and Ghost looked good for a year or 2. DeAngelo on the Rangers has gone from 50 point Dman to taxi squad.

I remember when Barret Jackman won the Calder.

 

[Raccoon Jesus]

Is there any untapped offensive potential with Mikey Anderson??? I was looking at previous years stats and saw he actually put up decent points in NCAA

It seems so. He's got great instincts and a good shot, but I'm not sure he's dynamic enough for the PP, so maybe like Vlasic? He's not a guy who's gonna lug the puck much, he's trying to make quick plays out there and sees the ice really well. I could see him having a 40 point year though (when the team doesn't suck eggs)

 

[The Butcher]

"We didn't lose the game; we just ran out of time" - Vince Lombardi

 

[fsanford]

The Good:
--AA--not just for the goals, but for the initiative, he wants the puck and he wants to shoot.
--Mikey Anderson is looking more like a Willie Mitchell clone every day. so much poise offensively and defensively.
--Matt Roy, not much more to say there.
--Vilardi--looking more comfortable and earning more time, absolutely took over a shift in a way I haven't seen a King do in a long time
--Lizotte--miscast as he is did a lot of really good work tonight. Killed 3:36 in penalties too!
--Carter--god bless him, the only vet who wants to play this year
--Andersson/Grundstrom--did everything within 5 feet of the net, we needed that. f*** TM for playing them 8 and 5 minutes while dumping 22 on Kopitar again
--Kempe--glad he finally got a goal, he's still owed another lol. Much more purposeful with his skating, LIzotte seems to have rubbed off, creating a lot of havoc and turnovers. He's matured. Also one of our top PKers tonight.

The Bad:
--Dustin Brown--father time appears to have finally caught up. The effort is there, the hands unfortunately look like Mike Richards' last days.
--MacDermid/Walker--maybe 'bad' is too much but they self-sabotaged a bit more than they should have.
--Moore--typically like his game but he was beyond awful tonight. Overskating pucks and checks and just fumbling all over.

The Ugly:
--it's another ugly way to lose; play well 5v5 for the most part and just get raw dogged by two of the worst calls I've ever seen. Sucked the wind out of their sails, clearly. A good team needs to be able to fight through that and recover; we're not yet a good team. That feels like robbery, it's not like the Avs need the help, and the fact that there were a ton of good kills before getting scored on during that terrible call feels dirty.
--the first few minutes. Enough said.
--Essentially all the vets minus Carter, don't worry, they'll all get their own subheadings. But collectively, I'm absolutely disgusted by the cohort of Kopi-Brown-(Iafallo) / Doughty-Maatta. The only reason these guys are on this roster in this phase should be to lead the way, eat hard assignments, show the new guys how it's done; but there is zero enthusiasm, zero offense, zero defense, and just nothing but a turnover fest. It's just completely shameful that after all the big talk of being refreshed after 10 months and excited to play that they come out and just get flat caved in constantly. They're terrible examples right now and they're not going anywhere so they need to pull it together OR someone in the organization needs to have the balls to sit Kopi/play him far fewer minutes and slap the f***ing smirk off Drew's face while he's racking up enough minuses to undo all the plusses he's had to this point in his career.
--Kopitar--what happened? Is it father time? He's looking slower, weaker, pushed off pucks like I've never seen. The brain is still there, he just can't execute.
--Maatta--I'm about done with this experiment, him and Drew are as toxic as the Muzzin-Martinez pairing. Both leading the rush while neither can do anything? f*** right off.
--Iafallo--appreciate the effort, and maybe it's even more his linemates than him--but we need more.
--Drew--I can't defend him anymore. Absolutely pathetic. All over the ice. The few plays he makes to try to get on TSN are outweighed by the constant mistakes and throwing his teammates hand grenades that he can't defuse after. It's not skating/fitness, at least it doesn't seem so--the skating is there, the effort is mostly there. Is it arrogance? Is he in his own head? Is he just physically toast like it appears Brown is? I always thought he had high IQ and thus would age well since it wasn't a physical gifts game anyway--but he's doing his best to prove me wrong and look like Erik Gudbrandson. Oh, and he STILL got 27 minutes, and we can't complain that it's all PK time because Anderson/Roy ate barely less as well, they just don't also get force fed PP time to be cute.
--Todd is wearing on me with the above decisions. Can't make chicken salad out of chicken shit, but he's sure doing his best to make it worse.


All in all that game was VERY frustrating, just like the first two, and just for different reasons. Glad to see signs of life from most players, but some very very worrying trends developing early.

Per usual great recap. While I understand Athanasiou will not keep up that pace, the guy seems to have better hands than most of the roster, and speed to go with it.


Normally I would say he will be trade bait, but the guy has NHL experience, and skills to pot 20 or more a season. I hope the Kings look to keep him around long term.

Drew has morphed into Jack Johnson before our eyes. He giveth and he taketh away.


Since he and Kopi got paid, they seem to have started a semi early retirement plan.
Note to self, no player is worth that much of the salary cap where a large portion of said contract will be played in their 30's

I know I would have been the first person screaming if they did not sign them, but this is why I am not a GM nor could ever be one.

 

[KINGS17]

We are getting from Kopitar exactly what I expected to get from him when he signed his 8-year, $80M deal.

The Kings aren't going to win anything with Kopitar as the 1C.

 

[Axl Rhoadz]

We are getting from Kopitar exactly what I expected to get from him when he signed his 8-year, $80M deal.

The Kings aren't going to win anything with Kopitar as the 1C.

LOL, who here expects the Kings to win anything anytime soon? Isn't that what this Byfield kid is supposed to be...Kopi's replacement? Then we have these guys named Turcotte and Vilardi...both centers. This guy Turcotte, they said he was the #1 center at the most recent WJC...interesting.

 

[Frolov 6'3]

We are getting from Kopitar exactly what I expected to get from him when he signed his 8-year, $80M deal.

The Kings aren't going to win anything with Kopitar as the 1C.

Cool, its that moment again, I guess,

1) The Kings arent going to win anything anytime soon with or without Kopitar.
2) You always dissapear when Kopitar does play up to his potential. Not to mention, its now his 5th season of that deal.

Where were you when he was nominated for the Hart...right....nowhere.

Per usual great recap. While I understand Athanasiou will not keep up that pace, the guy seems to have better hands than most of the roster, and speed to go with it.


Normally I would say he will be trade bait, but the guy has NHL experience, and skills to pot 20 or more a season. I hope the Kings look to keep him around long term.

Would be great if we could turn this pick up into anything at the trade deadline.

 

[KINGS17]

Cool, its that moment again, I guess,

1) The Kings arent going to win anything anytime soon with or without Kopitar.
2) You always dissapear when Kopitar does play up to his potential. Not to mention, its now his 5th season of that deal.

Where were you when he was nominated for the Hart...right....nowhere.

I was right here when he was nominated for the Hart, and said he had a great season. Don't try to revise history.

It is now the fifth season of the deal, and the first four years turned out pretty much how I predicted. Want to place a wager on the remaining four years of Kopitar's deal?

Glad to see you finally came to the realization the Kings could finish close to DFL without Kopitar just as easily as they can with him. Too bad the Kings don't have the assets they could have received had they decided to do it without him.

 

[Lt Dan]

We are getting from Kopitar exactly what I expected to get from him when he signed his 8-year, $80M deal.

The Kings aren't going to win anything with Kopitar as the 1C.

Depth won us our cups.

We are (currently) deep AF with 3rd and 4th liners. Brown is a 3rd liner at this point and Iafallo always has been one. Anze is getting the focus of the other team and is why AA(mco) and Carter have been most of our offense.

I would love Byfield or Turcotte to push Anze down the depth chart or even have a few of these guys pan out and have 2 legit scoring lines again

We are a long way from

Williams Kopitar (Legit) Brown
Penner/(Legit) King Richards Carter

 

[tny760]

i mean i think we're gonna get 50-60 points out of kopitar at worst for the rest of his contract. is that worth $10M? probably not, i don't think anyone's worth $10M though. i'm not concerned if he's our 1C or 2C at that price tag, but he absolutely can't have games like he had last night. he sucked. that said, he brings other things to the table and those have value too, especially to a rebuilding team

i'm much more concerned about doughty turning into an albatross, if he isn't already. at first i thought he could develop into a defensive defenseman once the speed and skill left him but he seems mentally unable to let it go and change his play

 

[tny760]

AA(mco)

honk honk

one of the finest pieces of marketing from my childhood, that'll probably never leave my brain

 

[Frolov 6'3]

I was right here when he was nominated for the Hart, and said he had a great season. Don't try to revise history.

Thats very intriguing but you should have said this too;

“We are getting from Kopitar exactly what I expected to get from him when he signed his 8-year, $80M deal.”

Than you are fair.....yes we would laugh, but at least you stick to it.

However, at those moments you never feel the need to tell us all what you were expecting from him when he signed that deal.

Glad to see you finally came to the realization the Kings could finish close to DFL without Kopitar just as easily as they can with him. Too bad the Kings don't have the assets they could have received had they decided to do it without him

The times a team trade away a captain with two rings at age 28/29, are countable on one hand.

 

[NotLeddy]

Big AA fan. Happy he's producing for you guys.

 

[KINGS17]

Depth won us our cups.

We are (currently) deep AF with 3rd and 4th liners. Brown is a 3rd liner at this point and Iafallo always has been one. Anze is getting the focus of the other team and is why AA(mco) and Carter have been most of our offense.

I would love Byfield or Turcotte to push Anze down the depth chart or even have a few of these guys pan out and have 2 legit scoring lines again

We are a long way from

Williams Kopitar (Legit) Brown
Penner/(Legit) King Richards Carter

Hoping for Byfield, Vilardi, Turcotte down the middle for the Kings some day. If these kids reach their potential, it is the kind of depth which wins cups.

The Kings seem to have some capable wingers in the pipeline, but they need to upgrade on the blue line. Undoubtedly, there will be some trades along the way.
Who knew the Kings would have Scuderi and Mitchell in the top four back when Dean Lombardi was hired as GM.

 

[crassbonanza]

Really hate that the 4 consecutive penalties in the 2nd period ended up finally biting the Kings in the ass. There was a decent stretch where the AA/Carter line and the Lias/Tonka/Moore lines were completely controlling the play against the Avs. I hope that Kopitar and Doughty are just still getting their legs back because those two have looked like the worst players on the team so far.