The folly of getting too worked up about any one player or aspect of the game is that, almost inevitably, it turns around at some point. Take the Kings’ penalty-kill unit, which had an awful start, giving up seven goals on its first 11 chances in the first three games.
That poor start buried the Kings at the bottom of the PK efficiency standings, although there has been significant improvement. The Kings allowed seven power-play goals in their first three games, then eight combined in their next 13 games. In their last eight games, the Kings are 24 for 27 on the power play. They’re still ranked 27th in the league, but the percentage is steadily improving. Here’s what Sean O’Donnell said today about the penalty-kill unit…
O’DONNELL: “At the start of the year, we had some tough breaks. We played a San Jose team that was on fire. Any time a team goes 4 for 4, that’s going to crush your penalty killing. We’ve been behind the 8-ball ever since then. I would say, since that game, we’re probably in the low 80s somewhere (percentage-wise), certainly not what we want to do but I think we kind of have to forget about those first three or four games and worry about the last eight or 10. I think we were in decent position, but we just weren’t mentally there. We were in the right position but our stick wasn’t on the ice, or our stick was here instead of being here. Just little tweaks, and I think we’ve done a good job with attention to detail, and Quick has made some great saves for us too.”
Terry Murray also was asked about the improved efficiency…
MURRAY: “That’s the group taking a lot of pride in what they’re doing. Penalty killing is about pride. It’s about hard work. It’s about desperation. You’ve got to sacrifice yourself to block shots and work as a group to keep it nice and compact through the middle of the ice and into your D zone. Also, on the other side of it, as we saw last night, you have to have some big stops, and Quick made a tremendous stop on the Guerin power-play opportunity. That builds the confidence and you just keep it going from there.”
To follow up, I asked Murray about limiting chances. In the last four games, Kings’ opponents have had 2, 2, 4 and 3 power plays, respectively. That helps, although Murray had an interesting take on how that can be a double-edged sword…
MURRAY: “If you don’t give up a lot of opportunities, and you’re on a pretty confident role, you should be able to go out and do the job most of the time. On the other side of it, when you’re not doing it, it’s a very difficult thing to practice, the penalty killing, because of the intensity required and the fear that the guys on the power play are going to blast one, a one-timer from the blue line, and it’s going to be a high, hard one with bad ice in practice and it goes off the noggin and someone gets hurt. So there’s a little bit of Catch-22 in not having a lot of PK opportunities.”
Good stuff!
The penalty kill really has appeared to get better and better. Together with the PP, it’s important they got this shored up and keep special teams shored up, because it will be necessary come playoffs time.
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Oh…btw, before you re-post the quote more publicly, you’ve got “desparation” in the Murray quote.
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Thanks…bad fingers today.
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Rich, can you also provide some stats & rankings on how our power play is stacking up against the rest of the league.
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PP is something like 8th overall, meanwhile PK is about 26th I believe…
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This story points up again how statistics can lie. Like a pitcher’s ERA, if there is a bad start statistically, it can take the entire season to catch up. Sometimes it never catches up.
Last year, the Kings started out exceptionally well on the PK, insulating the statistics from the inevitable drop. Last year, the Kings started out very good in face-off percentage–same thing.
Eventually, the cream will rise to the top.
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you can always go to NHL.com for all the stats… (I figure if you come here, you have internet access
)
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The thing about the Power Play and Penalty kill is the statistical weight they carry. Have a couple hot power play games early in the season, and you can top the stats. Have a couple bad games, and you’re right down again. Have a couple lousy penalty kill games early in the season, and you “suck” for half a season. I think those stats would be a lot more valuable on a ten-game or twenty-game basis, kinda like a “last ten games” win-loss rating.
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For that matter, I think it would be valuable to have a “last ten games” (or more, maybe) view of most stats, including save percentage, etc. Frankly, if stats were collected slightly differently, it could be the kind of thing you could do “automatically” by computer. I’m kinda surprised it’s not (at least, apparently) being done yet. What it would require is a more robust stats database, but not rocket science (and I’ve done computer work for rocket scientists.) :-b
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WFT, Kenneth–
I agree. Topicality is important. The other things that make a difference are: a) opponent; b) road vs. home.
Lies/Damn Lies/Statistics. I guess we never get enough of any of those…
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really JPUCK? there is this really cool site called “nhl.com” that has all the stats for all teams. I think Rich has more important things to do than prevent you from effectively maneuvering through those pesky “internets” or finding important information on “the Googles” – come on now! Rich is big time now! No more menial tasks like covering the San Fernando Chili Cook-off that is won every year by the same old lady who lives at the Sherman Oaks retirement home or covering a purse snatching at the Galleria – two stories that were always “above the fold” in the Daily News. Now Rich sends Helene Elliot to voicemail – do you really think he has time to get stats for you that are readily available with a few clicks of the mouse? Come on!
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The other thing was, weren’t the Kings 7 goals in 8 or 9 pks in those first three games, something horrid like that? (help, Rich?)
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duh…
…DUH! Where’s the fun in that? If Rich doesn’t know or care, all he has to do is IGNORE the question.
Ever ask your friend what the score was when you came in late that time?
I figure, we can ask. Maybe we shall receive…
Maybe not.
It’s all good.
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Yup!
Stats can be useful when you have a specific question in mind, and look for the stat to see if it can help you answer the question. On the other hand, the best liars use stats (and, I don’t think anyone here is using them to lie, just to make that clear.)
The best news is the PK is steadily improving, and I think you could probably chart the PK% game-to-game and see that (not that I’m going to.)
WRT to my previous statement about how the stats are probably tracked, I was probably being ignorant. I’d be willing to bet each team tracks them much more closely and in a bewildering variety of ways, but they’re not going to share that with the competition–why would they?
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I know this is unrelated to this thread, but I need to know the answer to this question. Does anybody have the NHL center ice plan, and if so, when the Kings aren’t televised such as tomorrow against the Preds, will the other feed be a blackout?
I called my cable company and they weren’t sure… I’d rather know if I can view the games instead of shelling out $170
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Rumor has it that there is no Preds feed…
That would mean no TV anywhere.
Funny, how that happens. Somehow they manage to always show highlights on the NHL channel.
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Bako,
Assuming the Preds did have a feed, would it be blackout?
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In the past, I’ve seen blacked-out or skipped Kings’ games on DirecTV, the opponents’ feed.
That said, there is no guarantee there will be an opponents’ feed. Last year, there was a game on the NHL gamecenter (computer stream) which announced, “Waiting For Feed” the entire non-broadcast game.
In short, only those Bozos know for sure.
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WRT the Preds feed, I checked out their schedule, and the TV feed space is remarkably empty. I care a great deal about this as I get Center Ice, and am not in LA. If one of the teams gets a feed, there’s a good chance I get to see the game. So far, no game. Of course, the other game rights were purchased by VS; they and DirecTV hate each other enough to punish the fans over it.
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Oh..meant to point out that this was probably someone’s scheduling screwup–Saturday afternoon this time of year is all College Football, which has a cult-like following and won’t be preempted for the NHL.
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Preds feed generally isn’t blacked out in areas that have a paid or local-commercial-viewing choice, so if it’s on, it’s probably not blacked out, unless a local team is playing in the same sport at the same time.
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Khanon,
Here is the NHL schedule for the next week, including Saturday November 7:
http://www.nhl.com/ice/schedulebyweek.htm#?navid=nav-sch-week
Notice the empty white gap where the TV listing would be. Not good.
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Blank on the versus schedule, too:
http://versus.stats.com/nhl/scoreboard.asp?day=20091107
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what I don’t get about there being no Kings or Preds feed is, doesn’t the game have to be piped to Toronto anyway for video replay purposes?
so is it just that the sports networks don’t want to broadcast the game for whatever reason?
if that is the case, it’d be kinda of nice if the nhl made the Toronto feed available somehow.
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You all need to move to Europe. Center ice over here shows every game without blackouts.
lol
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Its funny that the Kings are the only untelevised game…
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The one thing about the Kings victory over the Waddlers is that they have instant cred on Versus.
I think we will start to see them frequently on Versus.
That can be good AND bad. I think we might see them on NBC later in the year/next year, too.
Can we say, 2011 WINTER CLASSIC in LOS ANZELES…?
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I hope not, Bako, because there’s nothing I can do short of buying Dish Network hardware or bending over for the cable guy to get those games. (THANKS DirecTV!)
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WTF,
I’d worry. Remember what happened to all those CHI games last year? They became Versus’ femaledog…
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Wunnerful! Yet another reason to call up DTV and raise Cain.
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Yeah it sucks that we don’t get VS on Directv anymore but blame Bettman for making a deal with a freaking obcure network anyway. Unless you watch all 400 hours of the tour de france, I doubt VS is on your favorites list.
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Khanon> I get NHL center ice every year, here in Reno they black out the Sharks games but there was a time when there was no sharks feed and the other feed wasn’t blacked out. So I’d guess it would be lifted.
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Khanon-
Ditto what Reno said. I live in the Bay Area so the Sharks games on Directv are blacked out IF the game is shown locally. However, if the game is not being shown locally, then the opponents’ feed is shown. I would think that would be true in LA. However, it’s possible that type of decision is made by the local area as opposed to Directv?
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Khanon-
I got the Center Ice package two years ago through Dish (in LA) and it was a total rip-off. First of all, you could never tell who was going to play until they were playing because they weren’t listed in the scheduling. You had to physically go to the menu on any particular day and highlight the channel to see which game was on. Second, there were 10-15 channels but 90% of the time nothing was playing on any of them, except rebroadcast games of college hockey. I never saw one Kings game on Center Ice. Save your money.
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