Angeles Analysis – It’s Not That Similar To Last Year, After All

As I sat in the press box watching the Kings come from behind to take a point in a high-scoring affair, I found myself drawing comparables to the start of last season.

From a glance, it’s obvious as to why. Last season, it took the Kings time to establish the identity they had created a season prior. In the process of getting there, they picked up thrilling victories besides frustrating points, with high-scoring affairs a regular thing. They were never out of a game, though you often wondered why they were in a position to need to be never out of a game. A bumpy start to the season eventually leveled out in mid-December and the team got back on track, playing more the brand of hockey that brought them success the year prior.

During yesterday’s game with Carolina, as the Kings picked up a point despite trailing 3-0, 4-1 and 5-2 against the best puck possession team in the NHL last season, it was natural to think back. When asked after the game, however, Todd McLellan believed the root cause between the two seasons to be different.

“This feels a little different than last year, this feels a lot more individual-based than group based.”

In the 2021-22 season, the Kings rallied together to make the playoffs behind tremendous structure and a team that was greater than the sum of its parts. Last year was clearly a more talented group, yet it wasn’t the same group from the structure standpoint right off the bat. It took them some time to find that overall style of play, around two months to be exact. Once it clicked, the results followed, with greater effect considering the improved roster.

The start to this season has felt different, in that it’s been individual plays within a 60-minute game, as opposed to the 60 minutes themselves, that have done the Kings in. Not every goal can be tied to an individual mistake – like what can you do about Mikko Rantanen’s deflection goal on Wednesday. But many of them can and they’ve come in a variety of different ways.

While I’ve seen the thoughts on the Kings goaltending, of the nine goals the Kings have allowed with goaltenders in net, how many would you truly pin on the netminders? A few probably can be and McLellan pointed to the notion that the goaltenders would love to have at least a goal back from their respective games. In both games, it turned out to be the third goal that you’d likely point to. Perhaps there are a couple of others where you’d like to get a save, but on those plays, you can also point to other areas within games that were equally responsible.

Take the first Colorado goal. There was missed coverage against one of the NHL’s best players in Nathan MacKinnon. Against a different situation last night, Brendan Lemieux’s goal early in the second period versus his former club, it’s a shot that could have been played differently, but it was also a chance created against a bad line change by the Kings. In both cases, the culprit is similar. It’s a breakdown from an individual, or a group of players, not a lack of a commitment to playing the game the right way. For the most part, the Kings have tried to do things the right way, even if it hasn’t yet translated into results.

Just three times during the entire 2022-23 season did an opponent control greater than 60 percent of shot attempts against the Carolina Hurricanes at 5-on-5. The Kings did that last night. The Kings also controlled more than 70 percent of both scoring chances and high-danger chances, per Natural Stat Trick. Not a single team did that last season against Carolina. It’s extremely early days, and the sample size is quite small, but the Kings have been among the league’s best in terms of both creation and suppression of quality chances. Over the course of a season, you expect those trends to turn into results.

Until that happens, however, trends are just trends. The individual mistakes that McLellan spoke about last night meshed all too tightly with what Anze Kopitar and Trevor Moore said in the locker room after the game. Though on a lesser scale, there were some similar threads to the game against Colorado as well.

In theory, those are the easier types of mistakes to correct. It’s individual moments and individual plays, not a team-wide structural breakdown or a lack of commitment to playing the right way. McLellan highlighted a few areas of concern in the defensive zone against Colorado and felt his backend was better last night. Against Carolina, there were two shorthanded goals allowed and the erred line change, all of which were correctable. It’s unlikely we’ll see that become a regular thing, but the plays that went into those goals against will have to be addressed and corrected. I’d be inclined to believe they will be.

If you’re looking at a glass half full, the Kings are one point ahead of where they were through two games a season ago and that was a 104-point campaign. Seriously though, there’s 80 of these to go. Stay the course and the Kings will be just fine.

No practice today, Insiders, a full team off day which I fully intend to take. Practice tomorrow morning will be an hour earlier – 10 AM – before the team departs for Winnipeg later in the day. Full coverage to follow as the team hits the road for the first time this season!