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It's quite possible that by the end of Saturday night we will know our 2013 Stanley Cup Final matchup.
With a win at home against the defending champs, the Chicago Blackhawks can punch their ticket to the final and set up an Original Six matchup with the Boston Bruins.
To delay that outcome, or perhaps even prevent it entirely, the Los Angeles Kings need to figure out what happened to their offense. And fast.
The 2013 Kings have pretty much been a bizarro version of the 2012 team that won the franchise's first Stanley Cup. Last year's team was one of the worst offensive teams in the league (if you look only at goal-scoring, anyway) but caught fire in the second half and into the playoffs after the trade-deadline addition of Jeff Carter. This year's team had no problem scoring goals during the season, finishing in the top 10 in the NHL, but has been unable to buy a goal in the playoffs, scoring two goals or fewer in 12 of their 17 games.
They're running into the same problem the Pittsburgh Penguins had in their Eastern Conference finals defeat with their star players hitting a cold streak at the worst possible time. Anze Kopitar has just seven points in 17 games. Dustin Brown has four. Mike Richards, their leading scorer through their first 13 games, hasn't played since Game 1 of the series when he was injured on a questionable hit from Chicago's Dave Bolland.
With the way they played last postseason it's quite possible the Kings would have won the Stanley Cup without Jonathan Quick playing as well as he did. They may have needed more than the 20 games it took them to do it, but they had plenty of offense to win without Quick putting up some of the best numbers we've ever seen from a goalie in the playoffs.
This postseason, however, they've needed Quick to pretty much carry them.
Perhaps even more concerning for the Kings this postseason than the lack of goals is how they've been losing the possession battle way more often than they did during the season. Over the past two years Los Angeles has been one of the best puck-possession teams in the league (even last year when they were 29th in goals scored, they still routinely outshot their opponents and owned the puck).
During the 2013 regular season the Kings were outshot by their opponents in just 14 of their 48 games. In these playoffs they've already been outshot 10 times in 17 games and were tied on the shot chart twice.
That's not the type of hockey that led the Kings to the Stanley Cup last year.
There was perhaps no more stunning example of this than Game 4 on Thursday night, when the Kings were shut down against a Blackhawks team that was playing without Duncan Keith and essentially had to play the remainder of the game with only five defensemen because Keith's replacement, Sheldo Brookbank, struggled so much. After the Blackhawks took a 2-1 lead early in the third period on Marian Hossa's goal, the Kings managed to generate just two shots on goal over the remainder of the period, including only one over the final 15 minutes. They generated none on a late third-period power play.
On home ice, against a short-handed defense, with a chance to tie the Western Conference finals series, that's a concerning number.
You have to give a lot of credit to the Blackhawks for making it happen. They've been great and look much more like the Presidents' Trophy-winning team that they are than they did in the second round against Detroit.
The Kings have no choice but to find some offense on Saturday night, and it's not going to get any easier with Keith returning to the lineup for Chicago.
If they don't, or if Quick doesn't carry them to another win, we're going to be guaranteed a new champion this summer.
