{"id":563041,"date":"2026-04-30T03:12:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T03:12:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/563041\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T03:12:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T03:12:19","slug":"kings-exit-interview-notebook-left-searching-for-answers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/563041\/","title":{"rendered":"Kings exit interview notebook: left searching for answers"},"content":{"rendered":"

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — Immediately after the Los Angeles Kings\u2019 fifth straight season with a first-round playoff exit, this time via a sweep by the Colorado Avalanche, Drew Doughty didn\u2019t have any answers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, we want more and want to win a playoff series or two, and I don\u2019t have any answers as to why it\u2019s not happening,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we gotta make it happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

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At Wednesday\u2019s exit interviews, after a few days to reflect, he still hadn\u2019t found much more.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t have a complete answer for you, but I guess we got to work our butts off this summer and be better next year.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Kings are somewhat stuck in a loop, but this season was statistically the worst of the past five. They had the fewest points out of those five seasons, and didn\u2019t even win a playoff game, much less a series. The season will be defined by missed opportunities, such as overtime losses, and the team\u2019s desperate attempts to use those close results as a sign that they were nearing a breakthrough which never actually came.<\/p>\n

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That mentality carried over to the playoffs, in which three of their four losses were narrow, but still losses nonetheless.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, we got swept, but I think that those games were close,\u201d forward Trevor Moore said. \u201cAnd maybe that\u2019s loser talk. But I feel like in the first three games, we really had a chance to win all those games, so playing against the best team in the league \u2014 and again, we didn\u2019t win the games \u2014 but it felt like we could have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over time, the constant loser points and partial-credit games wore on the team, particularly after the margins in the Pacific Division were so slim that flipping just a few of those games could have potentially changed their playoff matchup and altered their season entirely. Perhaps the close losing begot more close losing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like I\u2019ve never had this kind of season where every game is so close,\u201d forward Joel Armia<\/a> said. \u201cThere was a lot of mental battle for the group too, because you knew that you\u2019re so close to winning games, and then you just lose it [in] overtime or whatever.\u201d<\/p>\n

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For his part, defenseman Mikey Anderson<\/a> spoke positively of the team\u2019s off-ice culture, expressing hope that it can in some way set a foundation for better results on the ice.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way the wives interact, the way the kids interact, those guys have built a family behind closed doors that not everyone sees,\u201d he said. \u201cObviously, yeah, we have to figure it out on the ice, we have to win [in the playoffs]. You can\u2019t just keep getting in and losing. But I think a lot of the play out there, it starts with what you have in the room, and you watch the way those guys are, as teammates, as people. And I think, for me, that\u2019s a big thing you want to try and carry on.\u201d<\/p>\n

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As for the actual product, the Kings tried a few different methods to shake things up and get on a winning track. They fired their coach, made multiple trades and recalled a few different players from the minor leagues.<\/p>\n

Throughout the season, however, one very notable thing didn\u2019t change: the phrase \u201cwe\u2019re right there.\u201d Both coaches and players used it throughout the season, whether as a coping mechanism or a genuine rallying cry, and it became a symbol of the volume of close losses. And yes, it came up during the exit interviews.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we think we\u2019re right there,\u201d forward Adrian Kempe<\/a> said. \u201cI think we play good enough. I think we\u2019re a playoff team every season. We\u2019re confident in that. And obviously, like I said, we played good enough to win this year, too, just maybe didn\u2019t put us in a good situation when the playoffs started. We\u2019re playing one of the best teams in the league, so obviously it\u2019s tough, tough beating them, but I feel like we\u2019re still a playoff team every season.\u201d<\/p>\n

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As far as the nature of Kings\u2019 losses and the similar ways they exit the playoffs, the idea of being \u201cright there\u201d is technically true on some level. But their captain is retiring and a coaching search is in the works, meaning plenty of other resetting needs to be done. Right now, the Kings might be as far away as they\u2019ve been in a long time.<\/p>\n

In total, 17 players spoke at the exit interviews. You can watch complete footage of all of them on The Sporting Tribune YouTube channel<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — Immediately after the Los Angeles Kings\u2019 fifth straight season with a first-round playoff exit,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":563042,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5126],"tags":[366,144,883,5538,5,973,186,1760,240,5303,793,145,5304,5302,6433,4,881],"class_list":["post-563041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles-kings","tag-adrian-kempe","tag-colorado-avalanche","tag-drew-doughty","tag-exit-interviews","tag-hockey","tag-joel-armia","tag-kings","tag-la","tag-la-kings","tag-lakings","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-kings","tag-losangeles","tag-losangeleskings","tag-mikey-anderson","tag-nhl","tag-the-kings"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116491474878759770","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}