Instead of being involved in another Stanley Cup run, the Kings are left thinking about what happens next.

The Los Angeles Kings’ playoff run is over and in only five games. It did not feel that it was much of a challenge for the San Jose Sharks, but it was a huge relief to them as evident by Logan Couture’s remark “It’s nice to stick it back to them and beat them in this series.” (per Josh Cooper of Yahoo!)

ICYMI, Logan Couture threw salt in the LA Kings' wounds last night https://t.co/v61W9H7UBY

— Josh Cooper (@JoshuaCooper) April 23, 2016

As we are geared to do, we attempt to figure out what went wrong and that is what Abbey Mastracco writes about for NHL.com by identifying five reasons for their failure this post season:

1. The injury to Alec Martinez
2. Not playing with the lead
3. Taking too many bad penalties
4. Star players struggling
5. Lack of any any positive momentum from the regular season

Injuries happen, and there is no equalizing factor applied to the opposite team. But that is how the game works. Back when the Kings won it, I am certain that their opponents had their share of good players that could not participate, to which Los Angeles was all too happy to take advantage of.

Granted that Martinez was a key player on their blue line, they went out and got Luke Schenn to build depth for a long playoff run. Not long enough.

Darryl Sutter can complain about the officiating, but if self-discipline was an issue then that was something that was within their control. Stop being stupid and focus on the game. That San Jose had two more power-play goals than the Kings was not a real factor. In fact, the Kings had a short-handed goal. So consider the gap was one specialty team’s goal in favor of the Sharks.

Their record of 5-6-1 in their last 12 games was not awful, and we are constantly told not to judge a team on their end of a season. On the whole the numbers are not awful, but it shows how complacent they became. A great example of that was in their very last game against the Winnipeg Jets.

A win guaranteed them the division and a first-round matchup against the Predators. They notched a three-goal lead only to allow the Jets to crawl back in, catch them and win it in a shootout. I think they wanted the matchup with the Sharks and were foolish to believe that they would dispose of them as easily as they did in 2014.

All of Mastracco’s other points can kind of be summed up into one: The Sharks had lasers on their heads.

The Sharks had 16 goals in five games; the Kings, 11. That is a goals-per-game ratio of 3.20 to 2.20. Back in 2014, Los Angeles’ rate was 3.71. When it came time to shoot and score the Sharks were successful 12 percent of the time; the Kings, 8.8 percent.

Her colleague Eric Gillmore comes up with the same conclusion spread over his first three reasons why the Sharks beat the Kings:

1. Joe Pavelski’s scoring
2. All their blocked shots (115 to 83)
3. Martin Jones outplaying Jonathan Quick

The Sharks also missed placing 17 fewer shots on net, they gave up the puck 11 fewer times, and they stripped the puck away from the Kings seven more times.

What category did the Kings’ dominate in? Hits… 229 to 176.

I did not expect Los Angeles to win, but I was anticipating that they would put up a better struggle.

So what happens to them going forward?

A very good question, which the salary cap will rear its sticky influence over their future. They have a handful of forwards, defensemen, and a backup goalie that will become free agents this summer.

I estimate that they will have approximately $7 million to spend on if you factor that their players who were on long-term injury reserve come back healthy, Vincent Lecavalier retires, and any past overages and retained salary amounts are wiped off the books. The $7 million will need to be spent on five roster spots. (Note: This does not take into account for any increase in the actual total cap value the NHL and NHLPA agree to.)

The Kings will still be good, but unless they find someone to come up from their system of prospects, you can mark this as the start to the decline of their empire.

Essentially, the end of their purple reign.

The Kings are dead! Long live the Sharks!

R.I.P. Prince.