29: Los Angeles Kings

2008 finish: 32-43-7, 71 pts.  5th Pacific Division, 15th Western Conference.

Talk about creativity.  Predicting Tampa to finish 30th, again; and LA to finish 29th, again.  Chances of that happening two straight years are pretty slim — and lets be realistic, it probably won’t happen again.  However, to that I say that if I was predicting what I thought or hoped could happen, I’d pick the Penguins to win the Stanley Cup every year.  Instead, I’m making my picks based on where I see that each team is most likely to finish.

To clarify; Tampa bad moved laterally, at best, in the off-season; and LA didn’t seem to do much to improve either.  Sure, it’s possible, hell even likely, that one of these two teams will jump and finish within 5-10 points of a playoff spot, or maybe even sneak in and get steam-rolled by one of the juggernauts — but what’s the point of writing, or reading, wild-ass predictions with no logic behind them?  If you had to bet $1000 on one of these teams making the playoffs, would you do it?

Now, onto fact-backed predictions…

The Good: A quick glance at the Kings roster shows four solid, young forwards in Dustin Brown,  Anze Kopitar, Alexander Frolov and Patrick O’Sullivan.  If nothing else, these guys should at very least get better. They got a couple of solid young defensemen in the past entry draft, and Erik Ersberg came on strong down the stretch, easily posting the best goaltending numbers of anyone to see prominent time in a Kings sweater this past year.

The Bad: Sure they’ve got a few young forwards in the Show already, but what else?  As we’ve seen with Ryan Whitney, Brooks Orpik and Rob Scuderi, young defensemen take time to develop.  Even worse, as we’ve seen with Noah Welch, sometimes they don’t develop at all.  Those young defensemen could form a great blueline duo someday, or they might never make it into the NHL.  Eitherway, it will be some time before we find out.  Furthermore, raise your hand if you feel completely comfortable with a young goaltender who’s only NHL action is about 25 games worth?  Outside of Ersberg, former Penguin, now TV Star, JS Aubin is past his prime (did he ever really have a prime, though?), and LaBarbera didn’t exactly hold down the fort last year.

Bottom Line: The Kings are not unlike the Tampa Bay Lightning in that they have some serious talent up front, but very little anywhere else.  They get the nod ahead of the ridiculously rebuilt Bolts because I’d rather have one potentially good goaltender on my roster than zero.

Predicted finish in 2008-2009 finish: 5th Pacific Division, 15th Western Conference.