NHL Playoffs 2012: Why LA Kings' Upset of St. Louis Is the Least Shocking so Far

Albeit not quite as quickly or at the hands of the most likely suspect, the 2011-12 St. Louis Blues got the exact sort of postseason fate that should have been expected of them.

The eighth-seeded Los Angeles Kings polished off a four-game second-round sweep of the second-seeded Blues with a 3-1 victory Sunday afternoon at the Staples Center. With that, Darryl Sutter’s pupils are the first No. 8 team under the current playoff format to have dislodged each of the top two squads in their conference.

This and the preceding five-game annihilation of the Vancouver Canucks were only a few ice chips shy of impossible to envision, unless one was wearing black-and-silver lenses courtesy of the Kings front office.

Granted, Los Angeles is exponentially amplifying its argument that where it finished in the regular season is not indicative of its competitive aptitude.

The 2011-12 Kings' story is not unlike that of the Washington Capitals, the seventh-place team in the Eastern Conference. Like LA, the Caps made a midseason coaching change after repeat early exits from the playoffs and now have a chance to abolish the top two seeds in their own circuit.

Still, much more ought to have been expected of the Canucks and the Boston Bruins, the Kings’ and the Capitals’ respective first-round victims. Outside of the elimination of the Blues, those two series are the only other ones that can be definitively classified as upsets in the 2012 Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Although Los Angeles patently improved with the insertion of Sutter prior to Christmas and emerged with a playoff passport after a chaotic, four-way scramble among Pacific Division teams, Vancouver should have won that quarterfinal card.

One would think that, after winning a second straight President’s Trophy and sandwiching those regular season laurels with a seven-game setback in the 2011 Cup final, the Canucks would have learned something and readily put those lessons into action.

Instead, the fifth-most prolific strike force from the regular season was a one-man show in Henrik Sedin once the playoffs commenced. As a consequence of Sedin’s teammates failing to build around his point-per-game production, the Canucks were out within five matches.

On the opposite coast, the defending champion Bruins’ strike force similarly did far too little to test unripe Washington goaltender Braden Holtby. In turn, they brought on a seven-part staring contest between Holtby and Tim Thomas, with the latter giving the final blink in overtime in Game 7.

Another succession of defensive battles was presumably on tap when the Blues and the Kings, Nos. 1 and 2 on the final regular season defensive leaderboard, were reseeded for this round. But there was a stark underlying contrast between Los Angeles goaltender Jonathan Quick and St. Louis counterpart Brian Elliott, and it wasted little time breaching the surface.

After getting past the comparatively mediocre Antti Niemi and the San Jose Sharks, Elliott was presented with the new challenge simultaneously dueling with a fellow elite performer and backstopping the consensus favorites.

Besides that San Jose series, Elliott’s only other NHL playoff experience consisted of a 2010 first-round bout with the potent Pittsburgh Penguins, a series his Ottawa Senators expectedly lost.

The pressure that came with his new position in St. Louis against the likes of LA doubtlessly contributed to the fatal multitude of soft goals Elliott authorized.

It didn’t help to have colleague Jaraslav Halak, who had 21 playoff twirls as a Montreal Canadien, placed on injured reserve the day after the Blues lost their second straight home game to dig a 2-0 hole.

Blues coach Ken Hitchcock didn’t have Alain Vigneault’s option of supplanting a Roberto Luongo―whose inability to handle high-pressure scenarios is far less explicable than Elliott’s―with a Cory Schneider. Although, not unlike Schneider’s vain firefighting endeavor, Elliott redressed individually for Game 4, but only when it was too late for the team to regroup.

The Kings have a core with Quick and seven skaters now playing in their third straight postseason together. That very Los Angeles team forced the Canucks to accept a lack of second-round inclusion for the first time in four years.

Conversely, prior to this spring, none of the current Blues have been together for anything more than a first-round sweep in 2009. Their flimsy foundation was exploited when Elliott and his skating mates could not bail each other out when needed.

A six- or seven-game shortcoming against any of their divisional rivals, whether that was Nashville, Detroit or Chicago, certainly would have been a less startling way for St. Louis to bow out in the conference semifinals.

At the same time, after two straight learning experiences in 2010 and 2011 and after outclassing the regular-season champions, the Kings’ accomplishment in this round is less surprising than any occurrences in April.