Kings finally bring some speed to West playoff race

If a team is going to get hot during an 82-game there’s probably no better time than now, as the Kings have been doing with the season winding down and the playoffs approaching.

“It would have been better in January,” Coach Darryl Sutter said, and he was being mostly serious.

While stabilizing the lineup and finding their offensive footing earlier would have spared Sutter some gray hairs and saved players some anxiety, it didn’t happen until the last few weeks.

Adding forward Jeff Carter in a trade with Columbus allowed for better balance on the first three lines; promoting young forwards Jordan Nolan and Dwight King and puck-moving defenseman Slava Voynov from the American Hockey League has brought speed to a team that had precious little of that valuable commodity.

The Kings had won seven of nine games and eight of 11 since Feb. 25 before they faced San Jose on Tuesday at Staples Center. They had scored 32 goals in their previous nine games and had climbed from 30th in goals per game to 28th and were breathing down the necks of the 27th-ranked New York Islanders.

Okay, sometimes progress is slow. But the Kings aren’t anymore.

“We’re a faster team than we were,” Sutter said before the game. “These kids we brought up, Carter, Voynov moving the puck, make us a faster team than we were. We’re trying to incorporate that into the game a little more.”

He still sees inconsistencies within games, like the lull during the second period of the Kings’ 4-2 victory over the Ducks Friday at Anaheim. But those things are likely to happen with a younger team and Sutter’s being patient.

“With some young guys it’s still them understanding the peak. It’s been a hard climb for them just to get back in it,” he said. “I looked at when there were 24 games left I thought, ‘Well, jeez, maybe we’re going to have to win 20.’ So I didn’t even really know how you say there’s a peak or anything. We’ve got to just take it one at a time.”

The Kings and Sharks each began the game with 82 points in 72 games but the Kings were ninth and San Jose 10th because of the first tiebreaker — regulation and overtime wins. The Kings had 30 to 29 for San Jose.

Sutter was asked about the challenge of playing the Sharks, who were terrible in a 5-3 loss to the Ducks on Monday but before that had earned solid, one-goal victories over Nashville and Detroit.

“It scares the hell out of me tonight because I watched the game last night and I know them guys. Some of them well enough that I know how they’re going to come out tonight,” he said, laughing.

“They didn’t all of a sudden just become a bad team in 24 hours. So I know what we’re in for. And they’ll be good. Hey, that’s how it’s supposed to be.”

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Kings finally bring some speed to West playoff race