How the Los Angeles Kings’ season unfolded, from the start

This year was going to be their year.

For the Kings, this was supposed to be the breakthrough season, which accounted for all the optimism and high hopes when they gathered for training camp in early September in El Segundo.

Slowly, but surely, Kings President and General Manager Dean Lombardi’s vision and plan fell into place by rebuilding the franchise the right way, keeping high draft picks in the fold and nurturing them properly.

But there is the saying about the best-laid plans … and even the most-tired clichés have some element of truth.

Early-season problems forced the Kings to fiddle with the design. They didn’t have to go back to the drawing board, but they were forced to make a coaching change and a personnel tweak here and there.

The result? They ended up getting to their destination even though they took a circuitous and winding road.

OCTOBER (6-3-2)

It used to be that a season-opening trip to Europe for an NHL team was like a flashing warning signal: trouble ahead.

Not so any longer. Now, the road to the Stanley Cup has been winding through Europe.

The Stanley Cup champions the last three seasons — starting with Pittsburgh in 2008-09, followed by Chicago and Boston — all opened the season in Europe.

For the Kings, their season opener was in Stockholm against the Rangers, and their biggest off-season acquisition, center Mike Richards, assisted on the game-winning goal in overtime to win it, 3-2. One night later, they lost to the Sabres, 4-2, in Berlin.

Of note, the last time the Kings started in Europe was the 2007-08 season; the team missed the playoffs and changed coaches afterward.

Another welcome addition on the Kings’ European tour was star defenseman Drew Doughty, who missed most of training camp because of a contract impasse. He signed an eight-year, $56-million deal Sept. 29.

Before leaving for Europe, veteran defenseman Rob Scuderi, who won one Stanley Cup with the Penguins, thought the pieces of a winner were there, saying: “For me, it’s more of an on-paper, roster type-of-thing. We have the elements of a good team. But you still have to come through and do it.”

NOVEMBER (6-5-2)

The one-step forward, one-step back aspect of the early season befuddled the Kings. But as they tried to figure it out and work through their scoring woes, there was one thing they could count on: their neighbor to the South … the Ducks.

Anaheim also was having a puzzling season and would eventually change coaches by the end of the month. The Kings and the Ducks have rarely excelled at the same time and have yet to play each other in the playoffs.

For now, the adversaries were trying to prevent their seasons from slipping away and the Kings played their best stretch of the month against the Ducks.

In their first meeting of the season, the Kings and Ducks took it to a shootout Nov. 16 at Staples Center, needing seven rounds to decide the issue, with Kings forward Justin Williams providing the clinching goal.

If that game wasn’t dramatic enough, there was a touch of the unusual one night later at Honda Center.

There was a 17-minute delay to the start of the third period when some of the lights in the building did not come back on after the second intermission. The Kings emerged with a 5-3 victory.

DECEMBER (7-6-2)

The Kings players and staff boarded their plane Dec. 11, heading East for a four-game swing, starting in Boston. Murray was aboard but, as it turned out, he would not coach again for the Kings.

The Kings had lost four straight games going into the trip, and After discussions accelerated among team executives regarding Murray’s future. The Times reported a day later they were poised to make a coaching change and Lombardi did just that, flying to Boston to deliver the news to Murray in person.

At the time, the Kings were mired in 12th place in the 15-team Western Conference, muddling along with a league-low 2.24 goals per game. Murray stood one win away from 500 career victories.

“It wasn’t easy for both of us,” Lombardi said on a conference call, announcing the move Dec. 12. “I have such respect for the man. This was more than just business. This goes beyond that.”

Assistant Coach John Stevens succeeded Murray on an interim basis and Lombardi reached into his past and emerged with one name to take Murray’s spot: Darryl Sutter.

Apparently, it was time to get the band back together. Lombardi and Sutter once had been a team in San Jose as general manager and coach, respectively. Since then, Sutter had been general manager and coach in Calgary, guiding the Flames to the Stanley Cup Final in 2004, but had been out of hockey for about a year.

His debut as Kings coach was Dec. 22 and it came down to a shootout against the Ducks, a 3-2 Kings’ victory. It also marked the return of Richards, who had been out most of the month because of a concussion.

JANUARY (5-2-4)

January began with an overtime loss to the Colorado Avalanche, the sort of result that eventually became synonymous with Sutter’s first six weeks on the job. On the plus side, the Kings didn’t lose a game in regulation until Sutter’s ninth game behind the bench, a desultory 1-0 defeat on a Saturday afternoon at Staples Center, which also marked Dustin Penner’s date with pancake history.

Penner was scratched for the game and the next day, acknowledged to The Times he was dealing with back spasms that occurred while enjoying a stack of his wife’s delicious pancakes. It was also the first sign of his wicked sense of humor.

“I woke up fine,” he said. “I sat down to eat and it locked right up, never happened to me before. I couldn’t stand erect. I was probably in the third stage of evolution.”

More important than Penner’s choice of breakfast delights was the fact that the team picked up points in 14 out of Sutter’s 15 games, which lifted them back into the playoff picture.

FEBRUARY (5-7-2)

The Kings came back from the NHL All-Star break, where only goaltender Jonathan Quick represented them, to begin February, which turned out to be their cruelest month on the ice. But it ultimately spurred the changes that would make them Stanley Cup contenders.

Things started to go awry as they headed out for the longest road trip of the season, a six-game swing that coincided with the Grammy Awards at Staples and sent them crisscrossing the country — from St. Louis to Carolina to Tampa to Miami to Long Island to Dallas.

After starting the trip 1-3, and losing Jarret Stoll to injury, they turned to the minors for a pair of rookie forwards, Dwight King and Jordan Nolan, both of them diligent players in Manchester. The two made an immediate impact in the final game of the trip, in Dallas, both scoring. But two consecutive 1-0 losses convinced Lombardi that if the team were to remedy its 30th-ranked offense, reinforcements would have to come from elsewhere.

Uncharacteristically, Sutter spoke publicly about how his two most reliable scorers, Anze Kopitar and Dustin Brown, had grown stale and needed to do more.

In the meantime, Lombardi began exploring the possibility of acquiring Jeff Carter from Columbus. Carter, who’d been exiled from the Flyers on the same day as Mike Richards, had been a poor fit with the Blue Jackets and the team was eager to cut its losses.

In the end, it cost Lombardi a steep price — charismatic, if erratic, defensemen Jack Johnson, plus a No. 1 draft choice. The trigger was officially pulled on the Carter deal Feb. 23.

MARCH (10-4-1)

With a pair of victories over the Ducks and the Predators, there seemed to be a subtle change starting offensively for the Kings. In the first 12 games after the Carter trade, the Kings scored three or more 10 times. Five times, they scored four goals. Three times, they scored five. Brown, especially, seemed revitalized during this stretch, thankful that he’d survived the trading deadline.

The Kings won a season-high six games in a row from March 11-22, tied for the seventh-longest streak in team history. From March 11 to April 2, they went 9-2-1 in the closest Pacific Division playoff race in history.

Carter’s tough year continued when he suffered a deep bone bruise in his ankle March 28. Any chance that he could develop some chemistry with Richards was put on hold.

It was a race to the finish line in the final two weeks, with 12 Western Conference teams jockeying for eight playoff positions down the stretch, the Kings hovering on the edge, in one day, out the next.

APRIL (1-0-2)

In the final days of the regular season, the Kings had a shot at winning the division title but lost it. They had a chance to grab the No. 7 spot in the conference and slipped to eighth with back-to-back losses to the San Jose Sharks in the final two games of the regular season.

Instead of meeting the St. Louis Blues in the opening round of the playoffs, the Kings drew the Vancouver Canucks, the league’s regular-season champion and a team that had made the Stanley Cup Final the previous year.

lisa.dillman@latimes.com

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