Nothing `special’ about Kings games lately

Kings games: where power-play goals go to die. That could be the motto of late, given that there hasn’t been a power-play goal scored in three consecutive Kings games. They’re 0-for-6 on the power play and 10-for-10 on the penalty kill. I asked Anze Kopitar today which statistic he thought was more significant. Should there be more concern about the power play, or more celebration over the fact that the penalty kill has been strong. The answer, of course, is “both,” but it’s worth noting that while the Kings have played their last three opponents to a special-teams stalemate, they have outscored them 6-2 in even-strength, regulation situations.

KOPITAR: “I think PK has been really good for us, throughout the whole season, and the power play has not been good for us, pretty much the whole year. I don’t know which one is more significant. I guess, in the last couple games. it didn’t matter as much about the power play, because we shut them down with the PK, but at the end of the day, we have to get our PP going. Ultimately, the PP is going to win us games too, and those are the close games. We got away with one, probably, in Philly, but our power play definitely has to be better for us.”

After a dip, the Kings are back up to eighth in the NHL in penalty-kill efficiency, at 84.0 percent, and after practice today, Terry Murray talked about what has made the penalty-kill unit so effective of late, particularly in the Philadelphia game…

MURRAY: “F1 really did a big job. That was a key guy for us, up the ice in the high offensive zone and back through the middle of the ice. They [the Flyers] did several drop passes, and the whole thing that we wanted to do, on that, was get the right angle and push it to the right side of the ice. We line up with three at our blue line, and the more we can push it to our D side, it gives us a better opportunity to now handle that guy that has the puck. And that requires a lot of work, and smart reads by that F1 player. He was very consistent with it. There are great gaps in the middle of the ice, and whenever you have that, you’re going to create some turnovers and do some things in the middle of the ice with it, allowing them to set up.”

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