A look at how patience has been a virtue for an LA Kings team finding its identity as of late

Perhaps it took a night on which the Kings weren’t at their best to show the essence of what patience means for this club.

40 minutes down in Philadelphia and the Kings were tied 3-3 with the Flyers. Thing was, they had just played 40 minutes of what they felt was Flyers hockey, feeling fortunate to be level heading into the dressing room. There was no panic, though. There was a need to hunker down and get back to playing Kings hockey, certainly, but this is a group that’s played in a tie game or two in the third period this season.

As we’ve seen so often, the third period was the Kings period. As it needed to be.

The Kings came out and got a goal two minutes in. Then they pushed for another and eventually got it, feeling perhaps their first bit of relief all evening long. Despite leading for the bulk of the third period, the Kings scored four goals in total, collecting six of the period’s nine scoring chances and eight of the ten total shots on goal. The Flyers played the night before, I get that, but the Kings have been in that position too. In the third period, when the Kings needed to button things up, they were able to.

Despite not playing the way they wanted to at times before that, the Kings remained patient. And, once again, they found a way to get rewarded for it.

“We stuck with it,” forward Warren Foegele said. “Kopi’s goal [late in the second period] was massive for the group, just to take a deep breath and go into the third period, regroup and do what we do best.”

They say that patience is a virtue.

For this club, that’s been the case throughout this trip and even before, I think, dating back really to the 7-2 defeat in San Jose at the end of November.

Early in the season, the notion of an identity had yet to be formed. The Kings have always trended in a certain direction, but the consistency, game to game, simply wasn’t there. One night we’d see a suffocating, difficult to play against version of the Kings. The next, they looked outmatched. Some nights were defensively responsible, others were loose.

Now, I think we’re starting to see a version of this team on more and more nights as the consistency of the club builds.

Photo By Winslow Townson/Getty Images

Identity isn’t something you can just speak into existence.

If it was, you might have thought of the Kings back in training camp as a team trying to add more offense into their game. A team trying to change their systems, designed to score more goals and to get their fast-skating forwards into better situations. Although, the Kings are up from 2.51 goals per/60, 5-on-5 last season to 2.85 in 2024-25, the third best total in the NHL. Not too shabby. If the power play gets going……look out.

That’s almost become an aside, though, because of another number. 1.95. That’s goals against, per/60, at 5-on-5. That’s the number that says the Kings have found an identity.

It’s an identity that, when played to, leads to goalscoring opportunities. It’s an identity that is hard to execute every single night, but when it’s done right, man is it effective. It’s an identity that got Kevin Fiala to proclaim that backchecking is fun. And when it’s working, it really is fun, because everyone has bought in.

“We know the way we have to play if we want to win in this league,” forward Tanner Jeannot said. “It’s really tough, everyone’s buying in, showing a lot of character and everyone’s coming together as a group, trying to make that the main priority.”

The Kings will outwait you. They’ll lull you. They’ll make you make the first mistake.

Remember that line in Mighty Ducks 3, when Charlie Conway doesn’t want to play defense?

“Make him make the first move, Conway.”

It’s not the type of hockey that gets you on Sports Center. But it’s the type of hockey that collects points and wins games.

“We’ve been doing a really good job of it,” defenseman Joel Edmundson said. “It frustrates teams. We’ll play the long game, we’ll play a boring game until they start taking chances and that’s when we capitalize. I think that’s the strength of our team right now.”

The thing is, being patient on a regular basis is not easy.

As Jim Hiller put it, we all lose our patience, in life, on a regular basis. Just part of being human. I mean, reading the comments on LAKingsInsider on a daily basis? I know the feeling, Jim.

Just when you approach that breaking point, though and decide to become impatient, that’s when things always seem to go the other way. And, like last night in Philadelphia, when impatience turns into a style of hockey the Kings don’t want to play, it’s about how quickly can you regroup, take a breath and get back on track, as Foegele said above.

Generally speaking, the Kings have done that at a high level.

“You have to maintain your focus and most importantly, be patient,” Hiller said. “It’s when you think you might be able to get something, that’s where you give something the other way and so many times, a game is just who is going to lose their patience first. I think we’ve done a good job of that.”

The thing with patience, though, is it’s hard to have it. It’s even harder to maintain it.

It requires the highest levels of discipline and commitment, the willingness to stick with it and the mental toughness to maintain it. And it requires everyone. An impatient player, in a patient system, can sink what the other five players on the ice are doing.

Not to say it’s easy for Edmundson to buy in, but that’s his game right? For Fiala to be going out of his way to speak so giddily about backchecking, and impacting games that way? That’s huge. The Kings are getting the right type of buy-in from their best players. Starts at the top, with a perrennial Selke Trophy candidate once again leading the team in scoring. Rolls to his right in Adrian Kempe, one of the most under-appreciated two-way forwards in the game on a national scale. And right on down the list. Those players committing, and delivering, is noticed throughout the locker room.

“We have a lot of really highly skilled players on the offensive side of things that are buying in defensively to create those opportunities,” defenseman Kyle Burroughs said. “The guys that are going up and down the sheet, they’re backchecking, they’re forechecking, they’re doing the little things.”

As Edmundson added, when your skill guys are blocking shots or playing physically, giving up their body for the betterment of the team, you know you’ve got something.

“Everyone,” Edmundson said.

Everyone is contributing in those areas and, in the veteran blueliner’s mind, that’s what it takes to win games.

And win they have. The Kings are 8-1-1 over their last 10 games, the best mark in the NHL. Only one other team has eight wins and no other team has points in nine of their last ten. The Kings are finding success, their way, and they’re starting to find it on a more consistent basis. Two more games until the holiday break begins on Monday. Two more opportunities to be patient and two more opportunities to, hopefully, find success.

Anze Kopitar and Kevin Fiala both recorded multi-goal games to propel the @LAKings to victory in Philadelphia.#NHLStats: https://t.co/TXioO0Eexs pic.twitter.com/qBR2NFpIWk

— NHL Public Relations (@PR_NHL) December 20, 2024