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It took the Kings all of 3 games to decide that Useless (Brian Dumoulin) and Stupid (Cody Ceci) did not make a good defensive pairing after all, even if you tried hiding them as a 3rd pair.
(Remember, these dip****s get a combined $7.5 mn per, but Ken Holland and His Band of Idiots wouldn't pay Vladislav Gavrikov the $7 mn that would have kept Vlad from going to the Rangers, which means that we traded Jonathan Quick for NOTHING, which continues to eat at my soul.)
So Useless was moved up to play with Drew Doughty (who's of an age where he probably doesn't feel like zipping around the ice to cover for Dumoulin's old and useless butt) and Mikey Anderson was sentenced to drop down and try and get Stupid to remember which team he's supposed to be playing for.
How did the new defense do at Minnesota? Well, they fell behind 3-0 in the first period, but then they got it together and didn't yield any further goals. Did Drew and Mikey straighten out Useless and Stupid, respectively? Or did the Wild simply adopt a more defensive posture and try to hold their early lead? Can't say; I'll need to see more.
In any event, the Kings rallied in the 3rd. Fiala banked in a shot off of Wallstedt (the Minnesota goalie)'s butt and then Byfield dropped to a knee and sent one through the 5-hole. Then, in the final minutes, Jim Hiller apparently realized that putting 6 forwards on the ice doesn't allow for defensemen to use their position-specific skills from the point (finding angles for long shots, making cross-ice passes, etc) and so put Doughty out there at the end, as opposed to nailing him to the bench as Hiller had in Winnipeg, and Doughty sent a shot in from the point that bounced off of Wallstedt and came right to Adrian Kempe, uncovered because of the 6-on-5, and Kempe buried the shot for the tie (and did a little archery pose).
But then the Wild controlled the puck throughout the OT, keeping the Kings from any decent chances, and nobody could score in the shootout until Marco Rossi put one home in the 4th round for Minnesota.
And so the Kings limp home with their Pity Point (only their third point in four games played) to face Pittsburgh tonight and try and build some momentum, given that we have the easy win coming up against Carolina on Saturday.
(That last is one part bravado and three parts bull****, but we did lay the 7-2 smackdown on Cobra's 'Canes last season, so I'm going to get every last bit of juice out of those bragging rights before they expire, lol)
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