Waking up with the Kings: November 11

There’s no life or juju right now with the LA Kings, who had trouble generating and converting higher-danger scoring opportunities for the second consecutive game. Unlike Thursday night, they started slowly, and for the first 10 minutes there wasn’t enough execution to counter a higher-pace Calgary attack that pinned them back in their zone and made exits difficult. They allowed a goal before recording a shot and were fortunate to not have fallen behind by two as the Flames, who were also coming off a frustrating loss, won more of the puck and competitive battles at the outset. Los Angeles ultimately got their game going but still had trouble generating the level of chances they’d like, and other familiar issues arose as the power play wasn’t able come up with a big goal when there was certainly an opportunity to claw out a result in what was ultimately an ugly and unproductive slog. The man advantage had found pretty good recent success – largely driven by the first unit – until the Minnesota game. But that first opportunity on Saturday, in which they yielded three scoring opportunities to Calgary’s penalty kill before Dustin Brown’s half-break with a second remaining, was particularly awkward and emblematic of the all-around funk.

What happened to the life and energy of this team? This was a resilient group last season, one that won 20 games in which it allowed the first goal and had points in 10 of 32 – including six wins – when trailing after two periods. This year, they’re 1-8-1 when their opponent scores first and without a point in 10 games when entering the third period trailing. This is again representative of a team that’s really missing that big goal (or, really, any sort of goals). The body language doesn’t look great right now, nor should it for a team that’s in 31st place. But it does look like they’re not acting with any real aggression or confidence, a point that Alex Iafallo acknowledged last night and Willie Desjardins seemed to allude to in part. Several chances in which perhaps they could’ve used more assertion were Ilya Kovalchuk’s broken up 2-on-1 pass in the second period, or Tyler Toffoli’s delay while trying to stickhandle into a dangerous scoring opportunity on an angled break in the first. Both players were largely fine in this game, but the grip appears to be tightening on the sticks, which is going to happen to a 5-10-1 team.

The Kings were out-shot 13-4 in a second period they trailed 1-0, and while they’ve been able to cut down on the shots, attempts and chances against, they haven’t yet been able to generate enough of their own and rank 29th in the league with an average of 27.9 shots on goal per game. This can be attributed to not being able to get shot attempts on net; Los Angeles ranks 15th in CF/60 and 20th in FF/60. A number of other underlying metrics have largely stabilized, and Jack Campbell has been giving them a chance to win basically every time he leads them out of the tunnel. That the team is 31st in the league is an indication of the lack of life and energy on a team that continues to lose important segments of games and just isn’t summoning the situational offense that has allowed them to grind out ugly wins in the past.

–Lead photo: Juan Ocampo/NHLI