Kings in trouble, Canadian bias and Jaromir Jagr (Puck Daddy Countdown)

(In which Ryan Lambert takes a look at some of the biggest issues and stories in the NHL, and counts them down.)

6 – The Los Angeles Kings

No, the Kings are not really a bad team. They’re a well-coached, talented team that has always underperformed when it comes what you would think a team as good as they are “should” do. To that end, we’re now at the logical extreme of those problems actually putting the puck in the net.

After Monday night’s games, the Kings were 26th in the league in goals scored with only 175 in 72 games. The odds they don’t hit 100 are basically quite high. The odds they make the playoffs are now basically nil.

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That comes despite the fact that they’d also allowed the eighth-fewest goals in the league. When Jonathan Quick went down for a massive chunk of the season, the reasonable take was, “They’re going to miss the playoffs because they won’t get good goaltending.” Their goaltending was, in fact, fine (though the Ben Bishop trade still doesn’t really make a lot of sense). Peter Budaj was .917 in 34 games. Bishop has been .899 since then.

But no, regardless, it’s the offense that has sputtered badly. Maybe Dean Lombardi should have seen this coming to some extent. Again, they never really score a ton, but most of the guys that were supposed to drive this offense are on the wrong side of 30 and, quite frankly, not reliable at this point.

Sure, Jeff Carter has 31 of the team’s goals (and a point on more than a third of everything the Kings put in the net this year), and the No. 2 goal-scorer on the team is Tanner Pearson with 22. Anze Kopitar has been a huge disappointment with only 10 goals. Tyler Toffoli doesn’t even have 30 points yet. Marian Gaborik looks just about done.

It’s enough to make you wonder why Jarome Iginla’s ghost was their big offensive acquisition, though to be fair he’s now only six goals behind Trevor Lewis in terms of what they’ve scored as Kings this season.

Tough to anticipate what Lombardi will do here. If Darryl Sutter gets turfed, that’s not going to help the problem much. If there are buyouts, that’s probably a good call. But in all likelihood there won’t be. If they didn’t buy out Dustin Brown at any point in the past few years — even with an eye toward the expansion draft — why do it now? And why would Vegas take anyone this team doesn’t actually want to have around?

Lombardi’s next move here is important because it might be the one that takes away his safety net. And not even a Nucleus Of Caring will save him then.

5 – Eugene Melnyk

We have, at this point, come to expect most public assertions by Ottawa Senators owner Eugene Melnyk to be some sort of bad take no one agrees with.

This time, he probably won himself at least one supporter wearing a loud suit behind a desk at Sportsnet.

The idea that he wouldn’t let a player go to the Olympics if the NHL doesn’t do it makes perfect sense. When he’s your best player, losing him for three weeks doesn’t make a lot of sense. But because Melnyk is Melnyk, he said he would probably do it if Erik Karlsson were Canadian.

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And the reason this is awesome is it’s the perfect distillation of why Karlsson didn’t win the Norris last season. If he had the same season — say, a Brent Burns-y season — and were from Landsbro, Ontario, no problem. Everyone loves him, he’s universally seen as a top-three-in-the-world talent at any position.

But because he’s Swedish? And he plays in Canada? For a bad team? No dice, Karlsson! Back to the goal mines!

4 – Being a Penguins defenseman

Ron Hainsey’s out. Week-to-week, so they say.

You’ll recall the Penguins really only traded for Hainsey because, at the time, a pretty good-sized chunk of their blue line was on the shelf, and had been for a while.

That hasn’t changed much, except to say Hainsey joined them.

So by my count, that means Hainsey joins Trevor Daley, Kris Letang, and Olli Maatta on the shelf for the Pens. That’s a passable top-four, to be honest. And this team is how many points shy of winning the Presidents’ Trophy? One? Come on, man. What a team!

3 – Jaromir Jagr

Told this week Jaromir Jagr just passed Gordie Howe’s record for most points by a player after his 40th birthday, Jaromir Jagr, who is everyone’s dad, said he would also break Howe’s record for points after his 50th birthday.

May it come to pass.

2 – Playing spoiler

Speaking of the Pens being one point out, they wouldn’t be if they hadn’t lost 4-0 to the lowly Flyers last week. They made up for it with wins of 6-4 and 4-0 over New Jersey and Florida, respectively, but that Flyers loss rules because it’s my favorite thing at this time of year: A bad team with no chance of making the playoffs sticking it to its archrival.

This can happen any number of ways, including blowing leads to teams in a playoff race with your rivals. But of course head-to-head contests are the best way of all. The Flyers have one more game with the Penguins, and while I wouldn’t put it past the Pens to score eight times in the first period just as an eff-you, that’s the fun of hockey.

The thing everyone without a rooting interest should all be rooting for the rest of the way, in any game with playoff seeding or qualification implications, is absolute chaos.

It’s especially important at a time when all but one playoff qualifier is basically decided, but everyone is within a few points of each other.

1 – The Presidents’ Trophy race

Man this is getting hot. After Tuesday night’s games, Washington is ahead of Pittsburgh by a point with Columbus and Chicago right behind them tied at 100 points.

This is going to come right down to the wire, and all of them have interesting opponents and not just gimme wins (although there are a few of those mixed in as well).

I’m all in for this race. This and the 8-seed in the East are all that’s worth caring about in the final nine or 10 games. See ya out there.

(Not ranked this week: USA Hockey.

It seems like the smart thing to do would have been to not be openly dumb about not supporting the women’s team and development programs, but hey, you do you.)

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

(All statistics via Corsica unless otherwise noted.)

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