It's Over

One of my favorite television shows I have watched has been Breaking Bad, the story of a high school chemistry teacher who gets cancer and becomes a meth cook to pay his medical bills and to leave money to his family. It was more about his spiraling out of control as he toed the line of being a criminal, and then seeing what new depths he would reach as he became more and more of a new awful person. Anyways, that's really not the point at the moment.

The point is: It's over.

Much like *SPOILER ALERT* the end of Breaking Bad where all of Walter White's terrible decisions and callous behavior catches up with him, the Kings are pretty much screwed, but are lying to themselves that they are anything but that. They are sitting in that basement, yelling at their lawyer, saying they aren't finished, and then hacking up a lung. And just as Walter was told this, I'll tell you: It's over.

Yeah the Kings reverse swept the Sharks in 2014. Yeah the Kings were down by two games in 2013 to the St. Louis Blues. And yes, they are close to the same team that they were in both these scenarios. Their offense is arguably better than it was in either of those years. Yeah, Jake Muzzin and Drew Doughty are still two very good defensemen. But there's not much past that. Brayden McNabb has been fine, but Muzzin with Luke Schenn is pretty slow for a second pair, and the third pair features two guys that have played a total of eight minutes together otherwise. Not to mention it's Rob Scuderi and Jamie McBain.

The Kings, like Walter, still have some strings they could pull (like trying shooting on goal or having Jonathan Quick stay in position for fucks sake) but that doesn't deal with the fact they haven't played particularly well, are in deep trouble, and have too many holes in their blue line group.

Walter realizes he is a wanted man, lost his family, and his former associates want nothing to do with him any longer. But he still wants to keep running a criminal empire. The Kings are undisciplined, can't get sustained pressure in the offensive zone, and are being skated circles around by a faster team. But they still want their criminal empire another Stanley Cup. And like Walter's cancer, the Kings' defense is currently incurable and fatal.

So, yeah. It's over.

Schenn wasn't a second pair guy on a bad Flyers team. He sure as hell is being asked to do more than he is capable of being on the second pair in the playoffs. Scuderi needs a great defenseman to collect the loose pucks in the defensive zone. Because while Scuds is able to break up plays, he can't reach loose pucks and transition play back the other way. McBain can't be ask to play big minutes AND reset the router while also reminding Dean Lombardi what his Yahoo! email password is.

And if the Kings are lucky, they can slip away like Walter did and try to mount a return, but I think that's going to be for next season. Their defense, which has been their strength, isn't there any more. They're sucking down Ensure just trying to stay alive a little bit longer. The big bad Heisenberg/Championship Kings is just a legend at this point.

Or the Sharks continue their trend of not playing well at home, the Kings finally start controlling the run of play, and put pucks on net and win. Then in which case, ignore this entire post.

Prediction: A bunch of white supremacist meth dealers get shot up, but enough about Anaheim. Kings lose 4-1.