After forty-five years, the La Kings have finally won their first Stanley Cup Championship!
The Kings have played exceptionally well, and have made the ultimate comeback after they came into the playoffs first round as the 8th seed. In the beginning it barely looked like they were going to make it into the playoffs, but they fought hard for it and didn’t even go to a game 6 in a series until tonight.
The devils put up a strong fight as well, as we saw throughout the determination to not be swept in the Finals. The Devils came back to start to even out the series again in game 5 when the won, preventing the Kings from hoisting the cup above their heads. The Kings were still only one win away, but if the Devils could come back they would force a game 7 to go back to New Jersey.
But they couldn’t do that, and it is almost a blessing that the Kings lost game 5 because when they won tonight they were able to hoist the cup in the arena filled with all their adorning fans. Especially some fans who have been waiting for the cup for 40 plus years, like in the above picture.
The Kings were incredibly strong tonight, and when they were given the major power play opportunity with a five minute man advantage, they did not lose their ambition and scored three goals within that limited time. When the second period started with a 3-0 lead, things were looking good for the Kings. Very good,but they couldn’t get cocky, they had to fight to make sure that the Devils couldn’t bring it back to their net. Goalie Jonathan Quick made sure that did not happen.
Quick won the Conn Smythe trophy for MVP, and within reason as he only let one goal through his 24 blocked shots and had a SV% of .944. That is an incredibly impressive record. That one goal he let through happened at the end of the second period after Kings Jeff Carter scored the fourth goal. The only bad thing was that Quick could not get the shutout win, but this is a Stanley Cup Final game, so that is understandable.
While the devils finally made it on the board in the second period, that was where thing began to fall apart for the visiting team. The Kings got back on track and continued to dominate on the ice. Trevor Lewis scored the 5th Kings goal when Devils’ goalie Brodeur stepped awaay from his post and went to the bench. With less than five minutes left in the game there was no way that the Devils were going to score 5 more times to force an overtime. They were finished, but the Kings did not let them go so fast when Matt Greene score a 6th goal a few minutes later. With about two minutes left in the game, everyone knew it was over and the Kings won the Stanley Cup 6-1.
We here at Ballhyped.net want to say congratulations to the team, management and staff of the LA Kings, as well as all the supportive families for this win. Good Luck next season, we’ll see you in October.
