Two homecomings (sort of)

After a couple of months of playing under this God aweful coach, I wouldn't be surprised if Sully wished he were never traded.
All thse line jugglings.
All these punishments.
All these demotions.

TM is just holding him back. He's struggling just like Handzus, Kopitar, Stoll, Brown and sometimes Frolov. All are having difficulty putting the puck in the net.
Now, Sully is on a line with Zeiler.
Any other team in the NHL, Sully is a 25-35 goal scorer.

And that's just the way its gonna be. A terrible coach will always remain a terrible coach.
You're never gonna see a terrible coach change over night.

Gotta agree with Anthony.Murray is wasting an offensive player with bottom six rift raft.Trade him if your not going to use him and that goes for any of the prooven scorers stifled by Murray.

Not even Jacques Lemaire would consider putting O'Sullivan on a line with Stephane Veilleux and Craig Weller...

O'Sullivan has all the opportunity in the world to produce more lately, it simply can't be hung on the coach that he isn't scoring. The coach has given him chance after chance with better line mates and little has come of it. He needs to look at his game and figure out what he is and isn't doing that's leading to his poor recent play & take a man pill and make it happen.

Whining about the job this coach is doing is just idiotic "black public relations". He has bought stability, accountability and improved overall play to the team and they are pretty much at the point they were predicted to be at before the season started. They are still development steps and a few players away from becoming contenders..

Are the Kings better?

This is also not just a 3 game losing streak. Call it 4 if you want now that the Dallas game is done.
It's 2 of 7 in January. It's 5 of 15 in Dec.
It's 10 wins out of 29 games going back to Nov. 15. with a few points added for OT losses.
It's getting outscored 18-20 from Nov. 15th through the end of the month.
It gets a little worse in Dec. 36-42.
And so far in January it's 11-22.
So. Since mid-November we've been outscored 65-84 and won 10 of 29 games.

Compare that to the 1st month of action.
October - 25 goals for, 27 against.
November up til the game before the 15th - 16 goals for 13 against.
In that span, the Kings won 7 of 15 games, and actually outscored the opponent 41-40.

Our coach isn't approaching this as a learning experience, but stressing wins vs. losses.
He's still punishing discriminately only those that he feels like punishing.
After the Columbus game on Dec. 23rd and the trade of Labs we could have solidified the 8th overall playoff spot.
Since then we've won 3 of 10 games taking 7 of a possible 20 points. We've been outscored 16-26.
All this has come with the better goaltending by Quick and Ersberg. Arguably, both goalies have had 1 poor game each. Bergie against Tampa. Quickie against NJ.

But, we're on the rebuild path, I just think we've learned all we're going to learn from Murray. These Kids can learn to hate losing under a coach who will actually teach them to work together for something other than back-checking only.

Personally, I'd like their teacher to be Igor Larionov, but even Pat Quinn would be a better choice at this point than Murray. I think Pat Quinn is actually more progressive and more dynamic. He proved in the WJC's that he can try new things but get the Kids to forecheck and backcheck like crazy.

I'm sure Lombardi WONT fire Murray before the end of the season, even though he has nothing more to offer. It would make him look bad.
It's not a mistake to bring Murray in even if you fire him at this point. He's taught these kids a valuable lesson about defending as a group and sticking together.

BTW - I have to wonder why Jamie Kompon is on the bench? What is his "expertise" beyond physical training?

I agree Eat,
I'm beginning to wonder about Jamie Kampon too.
If he's in charge of the offense and the power play, then he needs to be fired too.

His power play set is pathetic.
Stationing a player with a great shot (Sully) along the half boards is embarrassing as an assistant coach.

Keep Harpo and dump the rest.

Eat, re "are the Kings better?":

The Kings are 17-20-7. Four games ago, they were 17-17-6. They have spent virtually the entire season either at .500, or a game above or a game below. They were three games below once in early November, and again now.

So, yes, they are better.

And I would say the season boils down to scoring. If Kopitar, POS, Brown and Stoll start scoring, we can continue to be in the hunt for a playoff spot. If they don't start scoring, we will have a hard time even hanging around .500.

Quisp.

I think I highlighted a steady decline since Nov. 15th pretty well.
Maybe I'm wrong and things will turn around on the road for the rest of the season.
We need 30 points out of the remaining 38 games to exceed last season's point total, so maybe we can do it.
We've now got Doughty, Simmonds, Quincey, an improved Handzus, and soon, Moller.
I'd say that if TM can't improve over last seasons futility with 5 key additions, not to mention Stoll and Greene, he's a disaster.
We also have a couple of goaltenders playing fairly well. I almost forgot.

I leave it up to Murray to prove me wrong.

Quisp and nykingfan are two of the biggest supporters of what's currently underway with this coach, yet neither one of them pays to get into the building to see the team.
Sooner or later Lombardi will pay the price if there isn't a significant INCREASE in support for this team.
I'd hate for Murray to be the one to screw up what DL is trying to accomplish.

this team is NOT better. Not by a longshot. The personnel is better, by virtue of no MODRY, THORNTON, NAGY, WILLSIE, GIULIANO, KLEMM, AUBIN/CLOUTIER/Whatever... but the results with those clowns would not have been SIGNIFICANTLY worse than what we are looking at now. There's too much parity in the NHL to not believe that even that group of blind squirrels wouldn't find the occasional acorn.

Too many major cogs have taken steps backwards this year to say that this team is "better."

Eat, re stats:

Well, you said the Kings won five out of 15 in December. They were 5-7-3. There's a huge difference between 5-10-0 and 5-7-3.

Then you said we're 10 of 29 going back to November 15. Incidentally, our actual record since that date is 10-14-5. Again, four games below .500, but hardly the 9 games below you're implying. But I wonder why you picked November 15 as you're starting point. Maybe because the five games before that the Kings were 4-0-1??

Let's add those games in. See what happens. Oh, we're 14-14-6 all of the sudden.

This is called cherry-picking.

Kings this season>Kings last season..period.

There's just no debating it. The defensive improvements to the Kings system this season is better than the last several, in fact.

BOTTOM LINE..The Kings are not getting better ...the offense for ALL the players are down...The Kings are NOT going to the playoffs....

Neil,

You're right. The kings aren't getting any better.
BOTTOM LINE - DL & TM need to be fired.
Its their system. And their system is a complete failure.
Its like anything they touch becomes tainted.

Going back to the original post, it looks like Sean O'Donnell has a Wild connection too. Jim Fox noted that he was the first captain of the Wild when he was picked up off the expansion draft.