I'll single Brown out for both games. Very young team and he is still supposed to be a leader. Limited minutes but he needs to try to make an impact in those limited minutes. He's basically playing the same way he has the past couple of seasons but the hope is that he would muster everything he has and leave it all out there. His biggest asset throughout his career has been his hitting. The fact that he handles the puck like a live grenade means he is useless unless he is doing something positive that doesn't involve anything with the puck.
As for this team, it's more of the same. When the other team decides to play heavy, the Kings get blown out. When they decide to not play overly physical and just get in to an up-and-down game, the Kings look good since they can actually break out of the zone and then they are tenacious on the forecheck with speed and stick work. Edmonton was content to not be overly physical in Game 1 but they were committed to it last night, including McDavid and Drai. McDavid was finishing his checks up 6-0 in the 3rd while the Kings are still doing their patented fly-by's. The one guy that tries to stir something up has nobody else on the ice to join him.
It's cool for Kopitar, Brown, Doughty (the famous photo of him laughing in Vancouver is him not getting involved in a scrum) to turn the other cheek when there are a bunch of warriors throughout the rest of the lineup but that is far from the case with this squad that Blake has created. Almost every one of the young prospects is not a killer (Durzi is the only one with that type of edge) and they are learning from a bunch of non-killer vets. This can all be traced back to nobody doing anything about the Tkachuk elbow on Doughty as a problem within the organization. We've got new coaches and new management (in different places, anyways) since then but we've seen Wagner, Clifford, Roy, Bjornfot, Lizotte all get injured on questionable-to-outright-dirty hits and there is zero immediate response and no follow up response the next time they play the offending player. I mean, not even just a "let's take hard clean runs at Stephenson for the Bjornfot hit" type of response.
Winning teams stick up for each other. Winning teams have swagger and, when getting shitkicked by six goals in a playoff series, they set a tone for the remaining games.
It's a big problem and the answer isn't as easy as "we can just pick up toughness later". Again, that shit is costing 1st round picks and prospects from contending teams that are missing that type of player and, secondly, it isn't just a question of adding a gritty player or two: it's a question of an entire f***ing mindset of the organization. Lombardi had his line about having some criminals but, sure, he also wound up with a big and slow team at the end. The genius of Blake was to go in the complete opposite direction versus a hybrid. Well, the complete opposite got them back in the playoffs in the fourth season of a rebuild but we're seeing that the complete opposite is a recipe to get curb stomped when the games get real.
