Kings Goaltending Not Pulling Their Weight?
Monday, November 26, 2007

Posted by meaks17

In recent years the Los Angeles Kings have suffered from inconsistency in net. At the beginning of this season it looked as if they may have found a goaltender who could lead them to the playoffs in 19 year old Jonathan Bernier. Kings GM Dean Lombardi made the controversial call to send down Bernier and start the hotter of the two goaltenders remaining, Jean-Sebastien Aubin or LaBarbera.

LaBarbera has been Los Angeles’ go to goalie since that point. Prior to this season 27 year old LaBarbera has only started 24 games in three seasons. This season he has started 14 games while Aubin has started four games. LaBarbera has a respectable 2.51 goals against average and .916 save percentage this season.

The lack of an upper-class goaltender has hampered the Kings who are in last place in the Pacific Division. Despite having the second most goals in the division the Kings are second to last in goals against in the whole Western Conference, second only to Edmonton. With a quarter of the season complete many Kings fans are already looking forward to next season, hopeless that their team will make the playoffs this year.

Lombardi recently passed on the opportunity to pick up a bona fide started in Ilya Bryzgalov preferring to stick to in house options of LaBarbera and Aubin. “It’s really disconcerting that they (the Kings) didn’t go for Bryzgalov, we might have had a chance to make the playoffs with some consistent goaltending,” said Kings fan Jack Jensen.

LaBarbera started in a win against the Sharks last night and hopes to keep improving his play to get the Kings back on track to take them to the playoffs, down seven points in the division; it is still a possibility at this point.