Gameday Soundtrack: Wishing on a Star

So here’s something strange: the Chicago Blackhawks are kind of slumping. That is, they’re slumping by their standards. They’ve lost five of their last six games, though three of them were lost in overtime. They’re having some trouble with consistency and their number one offense fell short against the San Jose Sharks on Saturday, only managing a single goal.

Don’t get too excited, though, because the Kings have still been shut out in three of their last six games. In their two previous meetings this season, they’ve also only been able to score one goal against the Blackhawks. So even if Chicago’s going through their own stumbling stretch, the Kings are still topping them in the sad bastard department. At least, finally, this means the Kings are better than the Chicago Blackhawks at something.

Victory is bitter, and in the end, not as good as anybody thought it would be.

It’s easy to say the Kings will lose this game. They still can’t score goals and weren’t even able to score against Chicago back when they were killing other teams by scoring all the goals possible. The outlook doesn’t seem so bright, but the thing about the Kings’ recent dip into being worse at winning than a team like the Toronto Maple Leafs (who have been winning frequently enough that their season record is exactly like this Kings’ right now, oh wow) is that this makes zero sense statistically.

The Kings could start scoring at any time. They’re still the top puck possession team, the best defensive team, and among the league’s best in team save percentage. The last team to shut out the Chicago Blackhawks was, in fact, the LA Kings. February 25, 2012 was Jeff Carter’s first game as a King, Dustin Brown got a hat trick, and there were two power play goals. Imagine all those things happening now. What a concept! Prior to that game, the Kings had one game where they scored 4 goals and still lost, got shutout twice in a row, and had three games where they only scored one goal. Pretty familiar.

It’s likely that the Kings keep losing right through the Olympic break, but then again, no one has any definitive explanation for why they’re failing it up so hard right now, so maybe this will be the night their luck rights itself some. Most fans are probably expecting them to lose, but maybe they’ll win. Is this optimism? I’m not sure I’m doing it right. Oh, well.

On the cool side, as PumperNicholl pointed out, recent trends have taught us that fans can look forward to Anze Kopitar scoring a goal tonight. Gotta love that Kopitar guy.