Angeles Analysis – What Matters

If there was one quote to sum up last night’s game, it was this from Jim Hiller.

“We can talk about first 40, but it’s washed away with that third period.”

I could throw out some statistics from the second period, where the Kings had 17 scoring chances for, compared to five against, or the 10-2 advantage in high-danger chances. It doesn’t much matter though.

Could write about the way that Anze Kopitar and Adrian Kempe delivered in the middle stanza. Or the way Brandt Clarke activated to right the ship and tie the game with a well-taken goal. But that doesn’t much matter either.

We could talk semantics about whether or not it was a strong 20 minutes in the second or a strong 40, but again, it really doesn’t matter, does it? All seems to blend together when you look at the end result.

Kopitar said that the Kings simply weren’t ready to start the third period. A 2-2 game on the road, when you control the second period, is one you should consider to be winnable in any building, against any opponent. But you have to be ready for the fight. Hiller called the third period “unacceptable” and it was. To concede five times in a 2-2 game, after playing that way in the second period, it just cannot happen.

You can point to individual plays, mistakes, penalties, missed challenges, turnovers, goals against……etc, and look at them as being the problem. Individuals moments, though, isn’t looking deep enough, because it wasn’t one play, one moment, one player. As Kopitar and Hiller both put it, the Kings weren’t ready for the fight in the third period. And that is obviously concerning.

The onus has to be taken around the group. The Kings need more everywhere, coaches and players alike. The start to the third period was not the same team that ended the second. Two bang-bang goals and it felt like it was almost decided. The failed challenge last night seemed to be the dagger in the coffin, as a slim ray of hope that could have kept it a 3-2 game, even when the chance of a successful challenge seemed meek. Hiller’s quote last night seemed to feel like the game was over at 4-2 and even a challenge that was far from a slam dunk at success was the team’s best chance. The Kings haven’t had a multi-goal comeback win this season, but they shouldn’t feel out of a 4-2 game with 18 minutes left.

I remember Todd McLellan frequently talking about Alex Edler, even at 35 years old, as a player who had the ability to simply calm the game down in moments like that. Edler was a stallion in his prime, but he was a role player in his time with the Kings. He just had that in his game, though and when things felt on the verge of collapsing, Edler simply seemed to have this calming influence on the group that first got things back to zero, and them allowed them to get back in the fight. I don’t think it was some magical ability to regain composure. And it was obviously never just him. But in that moment last night, the Kings needed something like that and it just never came. Last night is now in the past, but these situations will arise again. The Kings have to find a way to handle them better than they did in yesterday’s game.

The last time I can recall this type of concern was right around two years ago. Last season’sJanuary was a much higher level of concern, but I don’t think it’s like-for-like. Last night, the Kings gave up five unanswered goals in the third period for the first time since losing 6-0 in Buffalo on December 13, 2022. That was a 0-0 game after 40 minutes, in which the Kings played pretty well, turned into a disaster with six unanswered in the third period. That game ultimately proved to be the one that turned around the 2022-23 season, even if we didn’t know it at the time. Coming into that game, the Kings were four games over .500, exiting three games above. The same circumstances they find themselves in now at 11-8-3.

The opponent next on the schedule in 2022 was the 23-4-1 Boston Bruins, the number one team in the NHL. The opponent next on the schedule this year? The 17-4-0 Winnipeg Jets, the number one team in the NHL. History doesn’t repeat itself by circumstance. If the Kings aren’t ready for the fight, Wednesday could be ugly. A group led by the same players as they were when they went into Boston and won needs to harness the same kind of compete, intensity and energy for 60 minutes on Wednesday as they did two years prior, in order to handle a Winnipeg team coming into their building. Adrian Kempe scored two goals. Kevin Fiala had two primary assists. Trevor Moore had the game-winning goal in the shootout. Those dudes are still here. On that day in Boston, they found it. On Wednesday, they’ll need to find it again.

To be clear, though, it’s about more than that game. What the 2022-23 team did is turn the Boston game into the start of a run. A seven-game point streak (6-0-1) and a run of 14 games that saw the team go 11-2-1. It was the kind of run that ultimately got the Kings comfortably back to where they needed to be and it included wins over what turned out to be three of the four division winners at the end of the day and six playoff teams in total. I can’t tell you the details of all 14 games, but I recall a semblance of consistency, a team that found its way and played their style of hockey just about every night.

It’s hard to say right now if this team can do the same thing, because truly good teams find a way to be consistent. Game-to-game, yes, but period-to-period, shift-to-shift. Right now, the Kings haven’t shown that. They hadn’t shown it in 2022-23 either but they found it in December. It took something, though, to get to that point. Perhaps last night’s loss is that something. But if it’s not, something else needs to be. The record right now is fine, but as the schedule becomes more grueling, the same kind of inconsistency will be punished more and more. Even the best 40 minutes, followed by a last night’s final 20, will likely result in a loss. And if it doesn’t, it will the next game. I think there’s a lot of skepticism right now about what this team is. If they can find it the way they did two years ago, it’ll prove some people wrong. If they can’t, it’s a question that will linger until they do, or until time runs out. With the Jets on the away bench at Crypto.com Arena tomorrow night, we’ll see if history repeats itself. If it does, it’ll be an earned repeat, though, not happenstance.