According to Chris Custance of the Sporting News, the Kings are. I'm not so sure. This is all way too early to seriously speculate about, but the way I see it the Sharks are going to win the division again and the Ducks will probably finish 2nd unless Scott Niedermayer or Ryan Getzlaf get injured for any length of time. The Kings would have to finish 3rd in the division and hope that the Central beat each other up enough so they only sent 3 teams to the playoffs.
So really, the Kings need to be better than the Dallas Stars and the Phoenix Coyotes and then hope. Are the Kings going to better than the Stars and the Coyotes? I think so, but I'm not confident. The Stars got the best free agent of the three because Brendan Morrow will be back, while the Coyotes were competitive last year even though pretty much all of their young guys underperformed. Plus, they have the best goaltender of the three. The Kings did add 2 top-6 forwards (I'm counting Justin Williams) and a top-4 defenseman, but will the goaltending hold up? Will Kopitar rebound? I think there are too many questions on the Kings to pencil them into the playoffs just yet.
What do you think?
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