The Los Angeles Kings are trying to stop the slide before it gets any worse.
After back-to-back losses left them lingering near the bottom of the Western Conference, the Kings spent Wednesday looking for answers as they close out their homestand. Head coach Peter Laviolette said the problem isn’t just one thing - it’s been a collection of breakdowns that have kept the team from finding any rhythm.
“There’s different ways of not finding success on any given night,” Laviolette said after practice. “And I think we’ve kind of fallen into that a little bit.”
That was especially true in Tuesday night’s 3-0 loss to the Nashville Predators, a game Laviolette said featured too many issues to pin on a single mistake. He pointed to the odd-man rushes, the neutral-zone turnovers and the lack of defensive structure as part of a broader failure.
“We gave up odd man rushes, and [I could] tell you if we just give up the odd man rushes, we’re going to clean everything up, but last night it spread across quite a few subjects,” he said. “I thought we were spread out.
We turned the puck over in the neutral zone. I don’t think we defended well enough.
So there was things that we did that you address today and put it in front of them, kind of a point blank meeting, and say, ‘Listen, unless we clean these things up, it’s not going to get better.’”
The Kings are trying to handle the moment in two ways at once: move past the losses, but also hold themselves accountable for what happened the night before. Defenseman Joel Edmundson leaned into the first part, while Laviolette stressed the second.
“Sometimes things don’t go your way, and it’s easy to beat yourself up,” Edmundson said. “But, you know, [let’s] come in today, have a good practice, good energy, put everything in the past. All we can do is move on to the next game.”
Laviolette agreed the focus has to shift quickly, but he made clear that moving on doesn’t mean ignoring the mistakes.
“At the end of the day, we’ve got to move on and get ready for a game tomorrow,” Laviolette countered. “But I do think that inside of that, there’s got to be some accountability to what it is that we do the night before, so that's what you do the next morning when guys come in … it could be [changing] ice time.
It could be [taking a player] out of the lineup. It could be one-on-one meetings.
It could be just talking to a player. It could be video.
It could be team video. There's a bunch of different ways you can go with accountability.”
The Kings’ age has also been part of the conversation. They are the NHL’s oldest team, and that has shown up in areas like team speed. Still, there’s a belief that veteran experience can help them weather the rough stretch, and Kevin Fiala’s impending return could give the group a lift.
But Laviolette isn’t interested in leaning on those factors as an excuse. For him, the only thing that matters is whether the team starts turning its work into results.
“The bottom line is that what we’re doing isn't good enough,” he said. “Younger player, veteran player, veteran group, it’s not good enough, and we’ve got to account for that and straighten that out.
Can’t just keep rolling. We’ve got to move in a different direction here, and so, like I said, the morning’s got a purpose, and now you’re in preparation to try and move forward.”
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