Waking up with the Kings: February 19

The Kings were the better team for the majority of the 60 minutes of play Saturday night at Staples Center, but this season is running low on time for the “they played well but still lost” games. As strong as the performance was at times, especially in the second period, they still fell behind 2-0 21:14 into the game and have not been playing with leads over their 1-4-0 stretch. The entirety of the 58:21 of game time in which they’ve held a lead (of a possible 300 minutes) came in the 6-3 win at Florida on February 9. Over that span, they’ve trailed for 200:43 of game time, and haven’t held any leads in all four of their losses. Related: they’re 9-20-2 when the opponent scores first and 5-17-2 when trailing after the first period. Peter Budaj made some key saves during Saturday’s loss, but the game-winning goal was also a bad goal to allow, and it came on the heels of a turnover in transition. I don’t count turnovers or giveaways and don’t trust the building-to-building variances in determining those numbers, but I’m led to believe the team’s turnovers per CF60 has been better than their opponents’ over this stretch; Los Angeles is just getting burned right now because a much higher percentage of mistakes that they’re making are ending up in the back of their net.

Florida is among the teams in the league that stands four players up at the blue line when trying to stymie zone entries and protect a lead, a coaching development that irritates some of the more tenured coaches in the league, such as Darryl Sutter. That made Tanner Pearson’s calm and sublime backhander that he tucked between the legs of Roberto Luongo all the more impressive. Credit Jeff Carter for gaining the blue line and dishing to his left, where Pearson stepped around Jason Demers with relative ease. There was no real physical challenge to Pearson as he gained the low slot, but that play was representative of both the chemistry inherent between the two forwards, as well as the five-on-five excellence Pearson has shown this season. The impending RFA leads the team and ranks ninth in the league amongst qualifying players with 1.36 5×5 goals per 60 minutes of ice time. He was partially at fault for the game-winning goal against, but in seeing the forest from the trees, his ability to add over 90 seconds of ice time, increase his shot rate from 7.1 Sh/60 to 8.3 Sh/60, and increase his all-situations shooting percentage from 10.9% to 15.2% (!) year-over-year is both a very good sign in his development and an indication that the team’s purse strings and salary structure will become taut once again this off-season.

The Kings haven’t been playing poorly. They’re outchancing their opponents virtually every night, even when score effects are subtracted. There are mistakes, but every team makes mistakes. Teams that rank 21st in save percentage, such as Los Angeles, don’t receive goaltending consistent enough to shield themselves from mistakes as frequently as those that rank amongst the league’s upper echelon save percentage teams. There isn’t anything significantly amiss with the team’s constitution, or giving-a-[road apples] or anything cerebral. There might not be as many pillars of sturdy leadership as there were when Mike Richards, Justin Williams, Robyn Regehr, Matt Greene, Willie Mitchell and others were on the team or active, but what teams have those sorts of load-bearing bulwarks of championship experience? There are still a combined 21 Stanley Cups on the active roster, so I kind of roll my eyes at the assertion that I read on Twitter or in commenting that there’s some sort of lack of leadership or deficiency in the intangible. This team has been challenged more than all but about four or five teams this year in impact personnel missing, and they’re still producing the same efforts and playing the same way every single night. There are certainly holes on the roster. There is a lack of skill in the bottom six (though, in fairness, many depth forwards were quite good on Saturday). Goaltending depth in the organization remains an issue, and another trade may have to rectify that. This is a somewhat flawed but competitive team that has hung tough with injuries and wild goaltending swings and has benefited from the weakest Western Conference in several seasons. With a road game in Anaheim tonight, they’ll have another significant test ahead of them.