Here’s what Dean Lombardi had to say the other day about the Kings’ last-place finish in the Western Conference, and the fact that the Kings have missed the playoffs every season since 2002:

“I think we expected to be in the (playoff) hunt. I think it was realistic to think. That was a realistic expectation. The major culprit is goals against. Last year it was easy to pin it on the goaltending. It was fairly obvious. I think we started to make some adjustments in the second half of this year to tighten things up, plus Ersberg played pretty well. Even before that… I think Jason (LaBarbera) has to go to another level, but his performance was good enough to let us stay in the hunt. We had to tighten up in our own end and we didn’t do it.

“I don’t care how good you are. You can’t win… You look at the correlation between where teams are in the conference and their goals against. Obviously we can score some goals, and look where we are. I see what we have (in terms of defensemen) in Manchester and what we have here and it’s still an issue that we have to upgrade on the back, in terms of young players. We have to clarify the way we’re going to play. We can’t be standing here with this type of goals against. Is (the goaltending) at a Kiprusoff level? No, but it was more than respectable. I do think Jason did a good job before he got hurt. Think there are areas for him for him to improve, especially in terms of his physical condition, but he’s working on that.”