Trust Jordan Spence and Brandt Clarke more
This next lesson was a theme that carried through most of the regular season but was only magnified in this series. For the Kings, they essentially went with only four defensemen while Brandt Clarke only averaged 12:47 minutes of ice time but Jordan Spence was the most impacted.
After Spence played in 79 regular season games and averaged 16:47 minutes of ice time, he was almost a non-factor in this series. He averaged only 7:31 minutes of ice time in five games and was even a healthy scratch for one of these games.
The frustrating part is that when they did get ice time, both of these young defensemen made an impact as they each had a goal in Game 6 while Clarke also had a goal in Game 2 of this series.
What is even more frustrating is that when Hiller was asked about not utilizing his depth more during this series, he was defiant and said he had no regrets. At the moment, he probably didn't want to admit it, but going into next season, these two need to be more involved.