Stanley Cup Finals: 2012 LA Kings Are the NHL's Best-Ever Playoff Road Team

Uncannily enough, the only three teams to have previously won 10 road games in a single Stanley Cup playoff run have been a pair of New Jersey Devils squads and a team led by Darryl Sutter, namely his 2004 Calgary Flames.

Now the skipper for the Los Angeles Kings, Sutter could be in one of two positions by the end of this week. He could have an opportunity to deal two blows with one punch to the Devils franchise by simultaneously breaking their jealously guarded record and clinching the Stanley Cup on their pond in the Prudential Center.

Or, by about this Saturday, he and his pupils could already be parading down Figueroa Street. All that will take is for the Kings to assert themselves at the Staples Center the same way they have on multiple occasions in four different venues over the 2012 NHL postseason.

Already, the Kings have gone the longest without a road loss in the tournament at 10-0 and are a not-so-shabby 4-2 in their own mansion.

Sutter has already bested one of his previous clubs, the Flames team that went 10-4 away from the Saddledome in 2004. And it may require Devils assistant coach Larry Robinson channeling his 2000 self for New Jersey to deny the Kings a chance to match or eclipse New Jersey’s 10-2 road run in 1995 and 10-1 road record from 2000.

The way it’s looking right now, the Devils are only going to come back if the Kings outright let them. But the recent history is too dense with consistent poise to forecast anything of that nature.

Since opening the first round against the regular-season champion Vancouver Canucks, the Kings have trailed only five times on the road, never by more than a single goal. They have responded to every opposing equalizer―all seven of them, to be exact―by keeping the tie afloat until one of their own finds a way to break it.

The latter portion of their Western Conference championship clincher in Phoenix and the first two games of the current series have, sequentially speaking, been essentially the same. Los Angeles has taken a lead, allowed the host to draw a knot in either the second or third period and then retorted in the resultant overtime.

All four of the Kings’ playoff games requiring a bonus round have been won, and they have all occurred on enemy property.

Should a Game 5 be necessitated this Saturday, the Kings will be in a position to make themselves certifiably untouchable by their Calgary and New Jersey predecessors. One more win in Newark would mean a new record in terms of cumulative single-playoff road victories.

And it would automatically ensure the NHL’s best-ever playoff road winning percentage, even if they were to somehow let the series stretch to seven games and then lose that decider.

There may be some crossover Devils/New York Giants fans who can draw inspiration for that potentiality from Super Bowl XLII. But they had best not keep their hopes up.

Sutter’s pupils, who joined forces with him on the fly in December and fought for their playoff lives until the penultimate game of the regular season, have not succumbed to any pressure yet. And playing a (for better or worse) less attention-grabbing sport in a Pacific time zone market, they will not be put on nearly the same spot as the 2007-08 New England Patriots.

Nope. Realistically, barring an unforeseen twist, the Kings ought to polish this off no later than Game 5 or 6.