It's that time of year again. The weather is changing outside as summer turns into autumn, and 30 NHL arenas around the North America are preparing their buildings for a new hockey season.
It's been six long months since the Kings were eliminated from the playoffs last season. In the time since, the Kings prepared for what would be very high expectations in the upcoming season, and rightfully so. The Kings finished as the sixth seed out West with 101 points last season before being ousted by Vancouver in the first round of the playoffs, and with the bulk and core of the team returning, the expectations are sky-high.
The Kings were never able to land their much-coveted top-line scorer such as Ilya Kovalchuk, but they were able to add other pieces which many feel could make this team better than last season. For starters, left winger Alexei Ponikarovsky was brought in to add depth to the middle lines, and perhaps the most important signing of the off-season, defenseman Willie Mitchell was added to a very solid and arguably one of the top defensive cores that already includes Drew Doughty, Jack Johnson and Rob Scuderi.
On offense, Ponikarovsky joins Captain Dustin Brown, who returns along with Ryan Smyth, Anze Kopitar, Brad Richardson, Wayne Simmonds, Jarrett Stoll, Justin Williams and Michael Handzus. Hopefully, scoring goals won't be an issue this season, and a healthy Smyth and a more consistent Kopitar should help.
Jonathan Bernier, who
signed a two-year extension today, will back-up Jonathan Quick in net for the Kings this season after Erik Ersberg was placed on waivers. He eventually cleared and was sent to Manchester.
With the high expectations comes added pressure for the Kings to improve on last season's 101 points and go deeper in the post-season. Both
ESPN and
TSN have the Kings ranked fifth in their pre-season Power Rankings, so the recognition is definitely there.
The keys for the Kings will obviously be the same for any other team: staying healthy. But with a year under their belt together, the defense should be better with the addition of Mitchell, and that should make life a little easier for Quick down the stretch. Offensively, the Kings hope Brown steps up from his down year and contributes more in the way of putting pucks into the net. And hopefully the addition of Ponikarovsky will help ease the loss of an inconsistent Alex Frolov, who took his skills to the Big Apple as a free agent.
All in all, the Kings continue to grow as a team. General Manager Dean Lombardi has a done a nice job of drafting and tweaking the roster to build a solid future for the Kings, and hopefully they get over the hump this year and are playing beyond April, and even May under the guidance of Head Coach Terry Murray.
