Kings Article: LA Kings - Bringing together the dinosaurs and dweebs

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http://www.thehockeynews.com/blog/w...e-the-darlings-of-dinosaurs-and-dweebs-alike/

"The beauty of the Los Angeles Kings is that they bring together two opposing parts of the hockey world. These two factions have spent the better part of the past three years bantering back and forth, mostly via Twitter, about the merit and demerit of advanced statistics. Now they have a case study they can agree upon.

The dyed-in-the-wool geriatrics embrace the Kings for their throwback, defense-first, physical style of play backed by brilliant goaltending. They’re big, mean, nasty, iron-willed and brass-cojoned, and the old guard loves them for it.

The four-eyed number-needling geeks adore them, too, and rightfully so. After all, the Kings are the poster boys for the advanced stats revolution, particularly Anze Kopitar and Justin Williams who, along with Patrice Bergeron of the Boston Bruins, are the only players to be top 10 in Corsi close each of the past three seasons.

Count this corner among the pocket protectors (except cooler, of course), but fellow fancy stats freaks have to concede that the Kings belong to the traditionalists at least as much as they do to the futurists, because it’s the intangibles that make this team so great. And they showed that Friday night, stomping the Anaheim Ducks 6-2 in Game 7. (Imagine, Anaheim was 4-0-1 against Los Angeles during the regular season.)

Mental toughness is immeasurable (at least for now, as the advanced stats brethren will surely try to find a way to calculate that as well), but it’s clear the Kings are full to river flowing with it after winning six straight elimination games, four against the San Jose Sharks and two versus the Ducks."

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