Doug Johnson of the Puck Buddys issues this pregame report. Follow @PuckBuddys.

“Los Angeles is just New York lying down.” – Quentin Crisp

The Puck Drop: As hockey analysts go, it’s a fair bet the late Naked Civil Servant numbers among the more improbable. Yet we can’t find a better clear-eyed summation of the 2012 Los Angeles Kings than Mr. Crisp’s tart bon mot. Where the New York Rangers are a team that is on its toes, the L.A. Kings are lazing in a recumbant slough with nary the will to move. (“Someone get me a bucket!”)

Their last game before Monday’s dance with the Caps should illustrate the point. A sorry 31 shots on goal, with eight power plays (one 5-on-3) and not a single puck finds the twine? Against the Blue Jackets? At least in Versailles the ruined monarchy mustered the spirit to play a rousing set or two of tennis, and look what happened to them. Awkward!

Jonathan Bernier

But you can’t beat a loser with someone who isn’t there, and we’re not at all sure who of the Capitals will show up Monday ready to play – physically or tempermentaly.Prior to Saturday, the Caps last four games have seen masterly power plays, a dominating forecheck, and a genuine zeal to fight back to victory. But we’re now possibly down Backstrom and, again, Green, and Saturday’s outing didn’t dispel worries about flukey play.

So is this really what it has come to – which team looks more like it needs a fleet of Hoverounds? It pains us to say, gentle readers, that yes, that’s what it’s come to. And it is just one more reason why anything tainted by Los Angeles, and all its self-loathing narcissistic agony, quickly becomes a throbbing boil on America’s backside. Tonight at Staples, let’s do our part to lance it.

“Los Angeles makes the rest of California seem authentic.” – Jonathan Culler

Jarret Stoll

It’s just about this point you might be thinking “Hoho, surely the PuckBuddys will have vile things to say about Los Angeles! Heehee, they hate everything!”

Not to sound like Mikey from the Life cereal commercial (look it up Millennials), but we don’t actually hate L.A. Friends happily live there (who we’d like to keep visiting), it often surprises with its low-key charms, and beside, it’s like beating up the kid that everyone else before you has already beat up. It’s like calling the overweight guy at work fat; he already knows he’s fat and everyone else has already thought it, so where’s the victory? No, we prefer our targets outsized and a little daring… like telling the hot guy everyone’s panting over he’s “a little played out.” #Winning.

Yet, harkening back to Mr. Culler, the subject of the King’s authenticity of late has us, how shall we say, befuddled? Confuzled? Pettifogged? Befumfered? Whatever, it leads us to:

What Makes Them Hot or Not

Not… but Kinda Hot: Pretenders on the Throne. We can’t figure out who the Kings are anymore. It’s like the old game Kremlinologists would play where they would try to decipher major Soviet policy changes by how trimmed Brezhnev’s unibrow was, or the coat color of Yuri Andropov (always a snappy dresser.) It really doesn’t tell you anything meaningful, so you might as well throw up your arms and turn on Judge Judy – now there’s someone who knows what’s what!

And so it goes with the Kings. In their last ten they beat Vancouver and Chicago, but fell to Winnipeg and Colorado? We checked, and no, it is not Opposite Month, so we’re out of explanations. They’re in the League basement on goals per game (2.02) and have been kept to 2 or under in 19 of 21. And then there’s goalie Jonathan Quick (Best. Goalie name. Ever.), who is at career best levels and first in the League in shutouts.

Hot… Except When They’re Not: Princes Charming. So we pretty much already assured you of a low-scoring affair… the first time nobody’s scoring in LA! Ha! I’m here all week! That’s due in part to what we can only describe, again, as a confusing offense. Meaning, just who is their offense?

Davis Drewiske

Their lines are confusing, their patterns are confusing; confusion rains down like a pestilence when they hit the ice. The only thing we’re not confused by is how gosh-darned cute they are. Yeah yeah, I know; we promised to tune down the volume and the boy stuff…but we’re only human, ya know? Davis Drewiske (2G/0A in just 7 GP), with whom we’d share a brewski, Drew Doughty (3G/13A), who looks to be very naughty, and other goalie Jonathan Bernier, which we got nothing for, stand out not so much for being really good, but making it look good. Gap-toothed center Jarret Stoll (4G/8A) likewise hasn’t been cutting it up much lately, except for the fact that he is, if you search the Googles for “definition of cut”, what the answer is. Memo to Mr. Stoll: you picked the wrong career. (We’ll leave it to your over-heated minds to finish that.)

Again, together they’re really nothing special; at least as they’re being deployed.  But we think individually they have potential to start performing, and that Coach Sutter may be able to re-jigger this squad to that end. (*snigger He said end*) Also, lately the Kings seem to have our number, tallying four straight wins, and grabbing a frightening seven of the last nine. Eeep.

“The Capital of American idiots” – H. L. Mencken on Los Angeles.

So What Have We Learned?

Dustin Brown, puppies

The Kings have some of the deepest pockets around, thanks to Mr. Anschutz, and their home base, the Staples Center, is genuinely among the classiest arenas to be found. “Classy”, however isn’t how we would describe the Kings’ “Hooters Watch Parties” they sponsor at the gape-and-grope chain; “skeeved out” seems more apt. Perhaps they should consider Chasen’s, the Brown Derby, or perhaps Romanoff’s.*

There’s every reason for us to hope the Caps could show commanding play over a team as inconsistent as this one is. But there’s also a bunch of reasons to think that we suffer from the same affliction, and stats suggest they’re overall not that much worse than we are. “Hey Kettle, you’re black,” said the Pot.

So we will just focus tonight on the hope part. And as we prepare to crawl into our jammies (#capssleepover) for another late-night game, we leave you with the words of American icon Frank Lloyd Wright: “Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.”

Meme Memoriam of the Night

*The Meme is taking the night off to ballyhoo and honor the passing of Craig’s boss, a son of Tinseltown, Mr. Tony Blankley, who lost his brave battle with cancer on Saturday night. Best known as an erudite and accomplished communicator, Tony was also an actor, with many credits to his name, appearing in Humphrey Bogart’s final film.

Tony joins another of Craig’s bosses, Mike Deaver; another proud Angelino. In two cities renown for scoundrels – DC and LA -  they were two gentlemen. We can only imagine the conversation tonight in the corner banquette at one of those long-gone Hollywood haunts.

We’re goin’ to Hollywood!

Schultz For Norris? Maybe next year, Sarge. (Illustration by @megHamonster)

The Norris Trophy sounds simple to award: “The James Norris Memorial Trophy is an annual award given to the defense player who demonstrates throughout the season the greatest all-round ability in the position.”

Not surprisingly, it seems the voters (Professional Hockey Writers’ Association) use how many points a defenseman scores in the season as the “offensive component” when looking for their winner. Since the 1997-8 season, only last year’s winner (Zdeno Chara) has been out of the Top 10 in Points for defensemen – and he wasn’t out by much, ranking 12th.

A defenseman’s Plus/Minus factors in to the voting as the “defensive component.” In the same time frame, all but two winners had a Plus/Minus less than 10 – Nicklas Lidstrom in 2000-1 had a +9 and Rob Blake in 1997-8 had a -3 (the only other winner of the Norris with a negative Plus/Minus was Randy Carlyle in 1980-1). And you would have to go back to when the “Secretary of Defense” won the first of his two Norris Trophies to find another winner with a Plus/Minus not in the double digits.

We can narrow down the list to who should be the finalists, and eventually the winner, if we use these two stats to guide us through the candidates (as of Apr 10, 2010):

• Mike Green, WSH – 75 points, +37
• Duncan Keith, CHI – 68 points, +21
• Drew Doughty, LAK – 58 points, +19
• Chris Pronger, PHI – 55 points, +22
• Nicklas Lidstrom – DET, 49 points, +22
• Tyler Myers, BUF – 47 points, +14

We can further narrow down the list by age. If we take out Bobby Orr‘s Norris domination from 1967 to 1975, with the exception of Dennis Potvin (who sucks) in 1975-6, no other Norris winner was younger than 23 years old. That appears to eliminate Drew Doughty (20 years old) and Tyler Myers (19). My guess is the voters also look at the award as a “right of passage.”

That leaves us with four candidates – Green, Keith, Pronger and Lidstrom – with a chance to win.

If we go back to the criteria to win, “greatest all-round ability in the position,” it is hard to ignore Mike Green. He ranks first in Points for defensemen and second in Plus/Minus for defensemen and 4th overall for the entire NHL.

Looking at it another way: Mike Green would have the best expected win% (and wins) based on Goals For and Against when he is on the ice, even with less ice time than the other candidates:

• Mike Green, expected win% .761, 24 wins.
• Duncan Keith, .559, 20
• Chris Pronger, .625, 22
• Nicklas Lidstrom, .621, 21

The lone argument that could be used against Green is that he has played against weaker competition than the other Norris finalists. However, the Caps sit atop the Top 5 spots in the NHL for Plus/Minus, so this could skew the results a bit.

If “the greatest all-round ability in the position” doesn’t include being the top defensemen offensively (Points scored), the second best defensemen in Plus/Minus (4th in the NHL overall) and giving your team the best chance to win when you are on the ice, what does it mean?

Let’s hope the voters see it through and vote Mike Green for the Norris.

Sometimes a good protest comes in T-shirt form.

And then Stevie Y announced the Defenseman.

We heard Dan Boyle and Drew Doughty. Then Duncan Keith and Scott Niedermayer. Next was Chris Pronger and Brent Seabrook. And then… the 7th and final defenseman… Shea Weber?

After all the days that have passed since, we here at RMNB have still struggled to understand how Canada’s Best Defenseman, Mike Green, was left off the roster. Even as recently as Friday Night during the Olympic Opening Ceremonies, I professed to Daniel that Mike Green’s Defensive Acumen was at worst an 8 out of 10 – but more realistically a 9. And I said “EASILY” too. This prompted Daniel to investigate my claims as he was quite suspicious. Below are Daniel’s findings. How has Mike Green stacked up against his fellow countrymen and the rest of the NHL this year? See for yourself below the jump. You might be surprised.

First off, I’d say that you can make a fairly strong argument that the Chicago Blackhawk’s Duncan Keith is actually Canada’s best defenseman overall – at least this season. Green’s a very strong second though.

Here’s a handy table of the defensemen on the Candadian Olympic hockey team, along with the Capital who was left off (stats courtesy of Behind The Net):

Relative plus-minus is plus-minus adjusted for his team so that a good player on a bad team isn’t penalized. OGVT is offensive goals versus threshold (“contributions to goals scored against the opposition” above what a replacement level player would have done – Puck Prospectus); DGVT is defensive goals versus threshold; and GVT is total goals versus threshold (which includes shootout GVT as well).

As you can see, Keith is actually ahead of Green by a little over 1 goal (as of 2/12), though they rank 1-2 amongst all defensemen in the NHL. Also, Niedermayer sort of sticks out like a sore thumb. He’s the Captain of the Canadian team though, and was therefore likely chosen for veteran leadership and other intangibles more than his current playing abilities. And that makes sense considering his long list of accomplishment includes the following: 2 Stanley Cups, the Conn Smyth Trophy as Playoff MVP in 2007 & a Gold Medal with Team Canada in the 2002 Salt Lake City Games.

The Candian defensemen (not counting the Captian) actually rank 1st-2nd (Green)-3rd-4th-13th and 14th in the whole NHL in GVT. It’s a very strong crew, with or without Mike Green. When the team was chosen and Mike Green was excluded, I heard that one of the potential reasons for it was that Canada was trying to build a strong defensive unit. Looking at the DGVTs, that does indeed appear to be the direction in which they went, as Green – while excellent overall – hasn’t necessarily been the strongest on the defensive end. In fact, ranking all NHL defensemen by DGVT, the Olympic crew is 1st-2nd-4th-5th and 27th, while Green is all the way down at number 47. Taking him over Shea Weber might have been a good call given the narrow difference in DGVT and large difference in OGVT though.

Here’s a graph of all NHL defensemen with at least 50 games played this season, ranked by DGVT:

Those green lines are (somewhat ironically) the top defensemen on the Canadian team (ie. not Niedermayer). The red line is Mike Green. He’s slightly above the average (which is 2.8 DGVT for this group) but not by a great deal.

Even just comparing Green to his fellow Capitals teammates, he doesn’t come out terrifically. He’s third behind Jeff Schultz (4.3) and Alex  Ovechkin (3.4) in DGVT, and 6th in relative plus-minus. Additionally, Green is 13th (!) on the team – amongst players with at least 10 games – in Quality of Competition (which GVT apparently does not account for). Even facing lesser competition, he hasn’t been a stand-out defensively (though he’s still good there, and great overall).

I’ll finish by noting that I’m not the only one who doesn’t think all that highly of Green’s defense (from the pre-season projections at Puck Prospectus):

“The one hold up with Green is his sometimes spotty work in the defensive zone. This was especially evident in the playoffs against superior competition, so if Green works on his defensive game, he could become the top defenseman in the entire league.”

That comment was attached to a projection of 6.3 DGVT, whereas Green is currently on pace for just a 4.4 DGVT. I’m just saying…

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