E.L. wrote:
Real poor showing for the Kings as the Oilers dump them in five.
Doughty might recover as a depth guy, but as the main guy on a defence, he's toast. Kopitar is aging a little more gracefully, but was no match against McD.
I would imagine this costs Rob Blake his job. He sped up the reset to give Anze and Drew one more chance, and now the identity of this team is pretty messed up. Fiala is fine, but they need to seriously consider buying out PL Dubois this summer while it's still affordable. He didn't get the ice-time he was used to in Winnipeg and he faded fast. Boston probably still wants him, but at a discount.
Blake was up against a wall when he took the job, he had to rebuild on the fly while keeping an old balls core in place, and it led to some real difficulties. Still, he made some uproariously bad decisions, like throwing a lot of money and term at Cal Petersen thinking he was the goalie of the future, only to have him totally implode not long after. That then forced him to turn to a 36-year-old Cam Talbot as a starter and, well, that went about as well as could be expected. But the final nail in the coffin might be betting on Pierre-Luc Dubois. Turns out even when he got literally everything he wanted, he still went out and played like a listless slug. The season was on the line and Hiller stowed his dumb ass on the fourth line.
Just for entertainment's sake I hope they hand the keys to Marc Bergevin. Holy shit that would be hilarious, especially because you know Bergy's gonna be sporting sparkly designer suits and $500 Ray-Bans at every presser.