Lombardi puzzled while Kings go to extremes

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Here are some leftovers from my interview with Kings General Manager Dean Lombardi on Wednesday afternoon, starting with a point he made during a radio interview with NHL Live earlier in the day and wanted to clarify.

When asked during the radio show about the Kings’ 2-9 slump and disappointing performance this season he referred to his experiences as GM of the San Jose Sharks. He said, “What I found in San Jose, when we were building, is that the second year is always the toughest,” and some Kings fans, interpreting that to mean he considers this the second season of the Kings’ rebuilding, were angry to think he had turned back the clock on his timetable for making the Kings a Stanley Cup contender.

However, he said he meant that expectations are higher the second year a team is tabbed as a playoff qualifier, not in the second year of a rebuilding project. The Kings, thankfully for all concerned, are past that ugly point.

Although it would be difficult to know that based on their recent results.

Lombardi maintained that his team proved its capabilities during its 12-3 start, but was that the real Kings? Or is the real team the one that was 1-7 from Nov. 15 through Nov. 29 and has won only twice since Dec. 27?

“You’d like to think when you’re capable of doing something that you should be able to do it all the time,” Lombardi said of the good start.

But again drawing on his term in San Jose he said the Sharks didn’t “have this degree of swing” between extremes in the first season after they made the playoffs and faced external pressures for the first time.

“The one thing as you get older and you have experience the best thing about having experience is being able to draw upon it,” he said. “And I also knew coming into this season the second year of making the playoffs is always the toughest. When we were building that team in San Jose and getting better every year that playoff mantra the second year was the hardest by far. And so much of that comes from expectations and dealing with success.

“And I think what happens there at times is like, we had the same thing. We would have those swoons. It was evaluated internally. Call it what you want but sometimes dealing with failure is easier than dealing with success. How you term success obviously is certainly not the success of the big prize. But along the way you start feeling good about yourself but you’ve got to feel good about yourself the right way. Proud of yourself and believe in yourself but not to where, ‘I’m so good I don’t have to go out there and work.’ There’s a big difference. And learning that is sometimes harder than dealing with learning from your failures. And I sense a little of that. Now, we’ve magnified this.”

The Kings’ high was higher and their lows have been lower this season than he recalled going through at the same stage of the Sharks’ development, he said.

‘Part of that, too, though, is a function of the league. Every game is a war,” he said. “There’s not a lot of separation....Our goal differential is fourth in the conference. That is mind-boggling. That is the one statistic historically that if that differential, particularly five on five, is in a playoff position, you’re usually solid. And when you look at that you go, holy smoke. It’s in there, boys.

“Now, part of it is these mental letdowns, and you know what happens too, when you get yourself in that you don’t get the breaks. And now it snowballs. Critical moments you get a breakdown and that’s going back to the other point that good teams make their own breaks.

“Once you put yourself in this position you can’t use bad breaks as an excuse. We saw it time and again. Good teams make their own breaks. You let this thing slide, put yourself in this position, you’re not going to get any breaks right now. Don’t deserve them.”

--Helene Elliott