Halfway Home – 3 Up, 3 Middle, 3 Down Through 41 Games

For today, Insiders, we’ll take the opportunity to offer a halfway home check in. Only happens once a year after all.

Naturally, the focus right now is most recent stretch of games, with a 1-5-4 record over the last ten. That isn’t painting where things are at in a particularly positive light and that’s obviously understandable. We all feel that. Tomorrow, we’ll hear from Kings General Manager Rob Blake in a scheduled availability at Toyota Sports Performance Center, a midseason check-in with the media. For what it’s worth, the availability was scheduled before yesterday’s game and does not appear to be at all reactionary. More “here and now” thoughts to come tomorrow morning, after Blake’s availability.

In this article, we’ll step into a bit of the larger picture, with a look at where the Kings sit through 41 games of the season. Not focused all that much on individuals here, though they obviously contribute towards team-wide narratives.

As of this morning, the Kings are holding onto the third and final playoff spot in the Pacific Division by points and are in a wild card position by points percentage.

In terms of points earned, the Kings are 12 points behind the division leading Vancouver Canucks and five points behind the Vegas Golden Knights for home ice in the first round. They currently lead the Edmonton Oilers by a single point for that third spot, with the Calgary Flames and Seattle Kraken sitting three points behind. By points percentage, the Kings narrowly trail Edmonton (.613 to .610) for that position, sitting as the first wild card team in the West. If the season ended today, it would be Kings @ Golden Knights by points and Kings @ Canucks by points percentage. Way too early though.

At this stage in the season, the gap between points and points percentage is being bridged, more and more by the day. Personally, no matter what the games in hand say, I believe that points is a more impactful thing to sort by. Just because your points percentage puts you ahead of an opponent doesn’t mean you’ll win your games in hand. Other than Edmonton, which has played a league-low 40 games, the Kings still have at least one game in hand on every other playoff contender in the Western Conference. Those games are good to have, but they only mean something if points are picked up.

The gap is obviously narrower right now than it should be, though it’s taken pretty extraordinary circumstances to reach this point. Believe it or not, the Kings won’t play 1-5-4 hockey the rest of the way and believe it or not, the Oilers will eventually lose again. It took a run where Edmonton collected 22 of 22 points, when the Kings collected just 6 of 20, to narrow a double-digit gap. It’s concerning, but neither of those totals will sustain. The playoff outlook is still quite promising, despite the currently concerning form.

For a midseason review, taking a look at nine areas of the Kings’ game – 3 Up, 3 Down and 3 Somewhere In Between

3 (All Grown) Up
Penalty Kill Performance
Not a ton that needs to be said about the PK unit, which has helped to anchor the team throughout the season, win or loss.

Todd McLellan called the penalty kill the organization’s biggest project over the summer, coming off a playoff series loss against Edmonton that saw the Kings allow over a goal per-game in special teams situations. Enter a strategic overhaul that has seen the Kings look quite differently here in the early goings.

Even on this most recent roadtrip, the Kings did not allow a single goal at 5-on-4, a crutch to lean on despite the difficult stretch. At just over 87 percent on the season, the penalty kill has been arguably the best story for the Kings so far this season. Something they’ll need to continue to rely upon to get through the stretch they’re currently in.

Fancy Stats
In perusing Natural Stat Trick, here is how where the Kings rank at 5-on-5 in a variety of different metrics at this point in the season.

Corsi (Shot Attempts)
CF/60 – 3rd
CA/60 – 5th
CF% – 3rd

Fenwick (Unblocked Shot Attempts)
FF/60 – 2nd
FA/60 – 3rd
FF% – 2nd

Shots On Goal
SF/60 – 1st
SA/60 -2nd
SF% – 1st

Scoring Chances
SCF/60 – 4th
SCA/60 – 9th
SCF% – 4th

High-Danger Chances
HDCF/60 – 9th
HDCA/60 – 2nd
HDCF% – 4th

A Top-10 club in 15 different categories. Naturally some of those have overlap, some support each other, but over the course of 41 games, it’s clear that the Kings are one of the NHL’s best puck possession teams at 5-on-5. No team is averaging more shots on goal per/60 than the Kings and although the higher-quality looks are slightly lower, the Kings rank no lower than ninth in any specific metric.

If you’re a believe in those numbers, you should be encouraged that there are supporting metrics to suggest a team that is better than they’ve been playing lately. If not, you’re probably pointing to conversion off of some of these metrics. If you’re in the middle, then the numbers are the numbers. And the numbers are pretty good.

Road Performance
Recent play aside, the Kings have been one of the NHL’s best teams on the road in the first half of the season.

They rank inside the NHL’s Top 5 in winning percentage (.705, third) and total points earned (31, fourth). With a record of 14-5-3, just one team across the league has more road wins than the Kings, who have victories in the buildings of five teams currently occupying playoff spots. There was obviously the early-season headlines of the 11 consecutive road victories to begin the season, a new NHL record. As the team has leveled out a bit across the board, the record has come back down to earth, though still right around the North Pole.

At +1.09, no team has a better per-game goal differential on the road than the Kings do. They rank in the Top 3 in the league in both goals scored and goals allowed in away games. The Kings are actually clicking better on the power play (29.6%, second in NHL) than the penalty kill (84.4%, seventh), though both have been excellent away from home. The Kings also rank fourth in the league in shot differential, at +4.1 per game.

All in all, in the larger, 41-game picture, it’s been a heck of a showing.

3 (Malcolm In The) Middle
Power Play
The power play fits into the middle, because it is, well exactly in the middle.

How regularly during the 2021-22 season did we ask “how good could this team be if the power play was just league average?”

Well, the power play has been exactly league average at the halfway point of the season. The Kings rank 16th in the NHL, coming in at 21.2 percent. They’re right around the same spot in Net PP%, ranking one spot lower in 17th. There were a lot of early-season growing pains as the Kings adjusted to the departure of Gabriel Vilardi and the injury to Viktor Arvidsson. Four left-shot forwards on both units required new ideas and a different look to the PP. There have been nights where it’s really clicked and others where it’s given back a lot of momentum.

Of late, the Kings have seven power-play goals over their last seven games. Perhaps, as the season flips into the second half, the power play can be a driving force in getting the goals scored back to neutral.

Depth Scoring
There was a point in time when this would’ve maybe been leading the up section.

When comparing teams around the NHL, the Kings regularly led in the most players with X goals or X points conversations. It was never the high totals, but it was something like say five points through 12 games. The Kings had nearly their entire lineup at that mark, even as their leading scorer was only pushing a point-per-game. It was that level of depth that was a staple of the early-season success.

The Kings now have 13 five-goal scorers at the halfway mark, tied for the third most in the NHL and just one player shy of the league leaders. They’ve got seven players with 9+ goals, tied for the sixth most in the league. The Kings have 15 skaters with 10+ points this season, tied for the fifth most in the league.

By no means are any of those totals poor, but for a club that was the class of the NHL in those areas a month and a half ago, the Kings have seen their depth scoring slip a bit in recent weeks, getting just two 5-on-5 goals from the bottom six and one 5-on-5 goal from the blueline on the recent roadtrip. It’s come as the goals have dried up across the board. The pieces are still in place for a second-half return to early-season form. But it’s something that will need to improve for the Kings to score more goals overall.

Miscellaneous Stats
After ranking third in the NHL last season and fifth the season before that, the Kings currently rank 14th in the NHL in faceoff percentage this season, just over 50 percent as a team. Their top two centers in terms of draws taken are Anze Kopitar, who is over 55 percent, and Phillp Danault, who is over 52 percent. Kopitar is right in line with last season, while Danault is slightly down, though still at a good place.

The rest of the team, however, is clicking at just over 45 percent on the season, on 999 draws. Kopitar and Danault will be responsible for more faceoffs than not, including most on special teams, but it’s certainly an area the Kings want a bit more in. Perhaps an area that’s trending up, as Pierre-Luc Dubois and Blake Lizotte (prior to his injury) were both over 54 percent over their last 15 games.

3 (Doors) Down
Recent Form
This one is obvious, right?

The Kings are 1-5-4 in their last 10 games, one of just two teams in the NHL with only one victory from their last ten games. The other is San Jose. They’ve got six points from that stretch, which is tied for 26th in the league when looking at Last 10’s. There are a lot of metrics and a lot of footage that will show that, at least to an extent, it’s a record that harsh on the Kings for the way they’ve played. At the end of the day, though, it’s a results-driven business and a ten-game stretch like that one the Kings just finished isn’t going to cut it in the long run.

There’s time to get back on track, but some things will certainly need to change to hit that point.

Home Performance
The Kings are tied for 24th in the NHL with a .500 winning percentage and tied for 29th in the NHL with 19 points on home ice this season.

With a record of 7-7-4, the team’s disparity between the record at home and the record on the road was a major talking point. As the wins continued to flow in away games, and results were inconsistent at home, questions about the way the team played in both settings were commonplace. The have been some strong performances at home but there have also been a share of clunky ones. With four home games coming up to begin the formal second half of the season, it’s an area of focus. Coming off the trip the Kings are, perhaps it’s a bit of home cooking that can drag them out of their current slump.

Overtime
The Kings have done a good job in bringing some difficult games into overtime. They’ve just struggled when they’ve been there.

With a record of just 2-8-0 in games that extended past 60 minutes this season, no team has a lower winning percentage than the Kings. It’s unsustainably low, as even the worst overtime teams over the last several seasons have floated closer to .300 than .200. Still, if you look at recent games, the Kings had plenty of chances to turn things around, but to no avail. Just two teams around the NHL have a lower shooting percentage in 3-on-3 situations than the Kings, at 7.14 percent. The Kings are controlling right around a league-average number of chances but have a cellar-dwellar percentage of the goals. Although 3-on-3 is far from reflective of a 60-minute game, with the points that are on the line, this is an important correction for the Kings to make going forward.

Back on the ice tomorrow, Insiders, before the Kings prepare to take on Nashville in the evening.

As noted, Blake is scheduled to speak following tomorrow’s 10:30 AM morning skate, in addition to regularly scheduled availability. More to follow with key thoughts from the GM and a game preview as the Kings host the Predators. For now, a few hours of rest after a long trip, a delayed flight and a late arrival. Enjoy the Wednesday, Insiders, will be back with you tomorrow!