Sheng Peng didn't invent a story here. Kiefer Sherwood stood in a losing room on Wednesday night and said the word "disrespectful" himself, unprompted, about the Kings' conduct. The quote is real: "(The Kings were) up 6-2, put their top power play out. (Artemi) Panarin's blocking shots, celebrating to his bench. It's disrespectful." Peng's tweet even carried the self-critical part of the same scrum, the "things aren't going to change unless we man up & do something about it" line. The people yelling that a reporter manufactured outrage are yelling at the wrong target. If anyone flattened this into "Sharks guy rips Kings," it's the headline writers who grabbed one word and dropped the rest.
Blame the ecosystem all you like, but the quote is there, and Sherwood is wrong.
A power play exists because the other team committed a penalty. Sitting your best five on a man advantage because the scoreboard already looks comfortable would be throwing a game you're supposed to be trying to win. No coach in the NHL coaches that way, and no coach should. The Kings played hockey with the players they're allowed to dress, in a situation the rulebook handed them, against a team that kept taking penalties.
RatingAdrian Kempe had already scored three goals, Panarin was piling up assists, and the Kings led 6-2. Ivar Stenberg pulled the Sharks within 6-2 with roughly ten minutes left in the third, and ten minutes is plenty of time in this league right now.
The night before, the NHL proved exactly how much time that is: on November 3, Montreal led by four goals with 2:39 left in regulation and lost 5-4 to Winnipeg in overtime, the lead gone in under three minutes. That game alone makes the "disrespect" complaint look absurd. If a four-goal cushion with the horn in sight can evaporate, a 6-2 lead with a third of the period still to play is something you keep playing for. The onus to make a comeback happen was on San Jose. Los Angeles had no obligation to ease up so a trailing team could feel better.
Sherwood knows how to say the right thing, because he said it too on Wednesday. "It's not on the coaches right now," he said. "We're not winning our battles, we're not being hard to play against." He told his teammates to "stick together" and demanded they "man up." That's leadership, the kind a room needs after a players-only meeting at the opponent's arena.
Then he tacked on the one line that undercut all of it. The Kings celebrating goals, running their top unit, and blocking shots with a big lead: that's a team refusing to insult its own standards just because the other side quit first.
San Jose sat at 7-9-1 after three straight losses, with plenty of season left to fix it. Wednesday's lesson is simple: if you don't want your opponent's best players on the ice late, don't let them go up 6-2. The only team that disrespected the Sharks on Wednesday was the Sharks.
