I Believed In You, Kings. You Broke My Heart. You Broke My Heart.

Hermano here.

In the seventh grade, my health sciences teacher taught us the cons of doing cocaine. The only thing I remember was that as much as it takes you “high,” it’ll bring you down the exact same amount. Who knows if that’s true. Assuming it is, I’ll go ahead and say that tonight’s Kings game was like hitting the reverse switch on Meter Maid from Spaceballs with a vacuum filled with cocaine.

First period? Possibly the most jubilation I’ve ever felt as a Kings fan, second only to… oh… Krushelnyski scoring that OT goal against the Flames while being pinned to the ice… Gretzky scoring his 802^nd goal… the Kings winning Game 1 of the 1993 Stanley Cup Finals… the Kings beating Detroit in OT in Game 6 in 2001… every time Bernie Nichols scored and did the Pumper-Nicholls.

Honestly, for every one of those first 4 Kings goals, my teammates/homies/wife/WAGs went absolutely crazy, together with the rest of the Kings faithful inside Staples Center. I haven’t ever experienced a feeling like that at a Kings game ever.

And then….. the second period happened.

It was as if Terry Murray went back to the locker room after the first period and said something like “Great job guys, great first period. I’m feeling pretty good about this, so let’s go home and call it a day.” And the team listened.

The first period gave me a high I’ve never ever experienced at a Kings game. The second period brought me straight down. Remember that final song from Get Him To The Greek?

Like the booze deep in my belly, I’m going down, down, down.

And for 20 bucks in the alley, I’m going down, down, down.

(Luckily, we weren’t nearby an alley.)

You know how I feel right now? Like the beginning of the 2005 season when the Kings faced the Stars for the first game of the season. Roenick (BARF) was our key off-season acquisition and gave us some attitude and pizzazz that we were missing for the past few years. My buddy DVR’d the game, but I couldn’t help but check the score after the first half of the game: 4-0 Kings. Oh yeah, I’m thinking. Stanley Cup here we come!

Unfortunately, checking the score halfway through the game was probably the worst thing I could have done. What happened next? I went to my buddy’s house, met up with some other friends, sat down to watch the Kings score 4-0… and then watched the Stars score 5 straight to win the game. Tonight’s loss was probably a little worse than that 2005 loss, but the sinking feeling remained: “The more things change, the more things stay the same.”

Actually, scratch that.

How do I feel right now? I feel exactly like I did 363 days ago – after the Kings blew a lead to lose to the Canucks 6-4. It was in our grasp. It was ours. Tonight, we took 20 minutes off and waved goodbye.

I’d LOVE to blame Penner or maybe even Terry Murray for not calling a timeout after the Sharks scored that second (or even third – or even fourth) goal. But the fact of the matter is that none of those goals were soft (unlike that first goal against Niemi). The team got beat and it was too much to ask of Quick to pull more magic tricks outta his ass.

Where do we go from here? We go right back to kicking ass for a full 60 minutes. And we bench Pennner and bring up Moller. Or maybe demote Penner and drop Westgarth. Or maybe call up Clune. And maybe we bring up Zeiler to take out Marleau’s knees.

Does anyone else think it’s slightly amusing that Penner and Ghost Joe (Thornton) both have 1 assist throughout this series?

Much love till my next post.

And feel free to follow my Twitter rants: @NHLwithHermano