Along with democracy came a much worse hockey league, a league that used to be a matter of national pride, and it has left a bitter aftertaste.  A sentiment expressed the other day by my mother-in-law but likely shared by many Russians, says a lot in a few words: “America buys away all our great hockey players.” (Read that with a grave finality to get the tone right).

Well, North America, but anyway. 

Its easy to think of Russian players going back to the KHL as quitters or traitors, but don’t forget that they probably already heard those things from their own countrymen for choosing to come here in the first place.  They choose to come here because everyone knows this is the greatest league in the world, and the Cup is the most glorious prize.  But if all Russian and Eastern European players went back to the KHL, lets face it, they give the NHL a run for its money – if not right away, then eventually.  And I think this is something that every player native to that region has to have in the back of their minds, and it’s a decision they must surely have to revisit from time to time.  Coming to America is great, of course, but lets not forget that patriotism is a thing – everybody wants hockey to thrive in their home country (hence the Olympics), and living in the same hemisphere as your friends and family is no small thing.

I’m grateful to VV for deciding to stay in America and play for the Kings – I frankly don’t think we’d be enjoying hockey tonight if he didn’t – but I would not condemn him for ‘bolting’ back to play in his home country.   I might judge DL though. (Not really because obviously DL wouldn’t be DL if that had happened).

If you count from March 11, it’s 24-4-3 (which is statistically better than the 26-7-3 and works out to about a 134-point season if extrapolated to an 82-game season; it also gives the guys a few more games after the trade deadline to form a bit of chemistry and figure out what they really had there).

I actually researched this yesterday, meticulously going through every season in team history because I was wondering if they have ever had a run as good as this 13-2 stretch in the playoffs.

The answer is no.

This is, hands down, the best run in team history.

But surprisingly, there have been a few regular season stretches that weren’t far off. They started the 1974-75 season 15-2-9 and didn’t lose consecutive games until just before Christmas. Later that same season they put together a 13-1-3 streak. The only other streaks comparable to those are a 10-1-1 run to open the 1980-81 season and an 11-1-3 streak last January and February.

There have been a few shorter streaks that were pretty good too. They went 9-0-2 from February 28 to March 24, 1974. There was an 8-game winning streak from February 15 to March 9, 1992, the longest in team history until they won 9 in a row two years ago (actually part of a 13-2-1 streak from January 14 to March 2, 2010). And finally, they went 13-2-5-2 from February 22, 2001 to the end of the season on April 7, a run that preceded the second-best Kings playoff drive in franchise history before this year.

I posted this originally at my own sad attempt at a Kings blog, kingsinhockeywood.blogspot.com.