Post by Los Angeles Kings on Oct 19, 2022 21:47:02 GMT -6
There’s no sugar coating it. 5 games into the 2022-23 PFHL regular season and the defending champions have absolutely shit the bed, laid an egg and have a Stanley Cup hangover of the worst kind.
5 games in, and only 1 win. 5 games in and a league worst, -10 goal differential. 5 games in, Peter DeBoer has to be nervous about his job security. 5 games in, pundits around the league are whispering the “R” word in Los Angeles (Rebuild).
So, it comes as no surprise, that Peter DeBoer held a press conference following a 7-1 drubbing by the Nashville Predators:
“I’ve never in my career coached a game, where you outshoot your opponent, yet lose by 6 goals. I’m not trying to say we out-played the Predators, because we didn’t. We played a good offensive game tonight, but we completely forgot our defensive game, and hung our goaltender out to dry. Let me be clear, we deserved to lose tonight, as we have most nights this season.
The pressure is on, expectations are high, and we’re playing garbage hockey. We’ve forgotten what it takes to win in this league. We’ve come into this season over-confident in ourselves, thinking we can take shortcuts to the discipline, to the hard work and dedication that went into last season. The target is on our back, we are the Champs! Nobody will roll over for us and give us a night off. You can’t play the Canucks for 82 games!!!”, DeBoer chuckles.
“It’s not the time to panic. We have the roster to make the playoffs and compete with the best this league has to offer. We simply need to find our game, and we need to find it quick. If we can’t, there’ll have to be changes. I know that, you know that, and the guys in the room know that. But we aren’t there yet.
For now, we need to focus on the little things, the details, one shift at a time. It’s not even about winning at this point. We need to focus on playing a good game, at both ends of the ice, to play the right way.
It’s easy to fall into the defeatist trap. To let self-doubt creep in and consume you. Hockey doesn’t get the credit it deserves, that its just as much a mental game as it is a skill game.
Tomorrow, there will be no bag skates, no puck skill drills, no fancy play sketch-ups on the whiteboard. Tomorrow, we are going to have some fun. Tomorrow we will find the appreciation of the game that we’ve lost. A game that we love.”
