Ending October – A Look At The High-Scoring LA Kings As November Rolls Around

As October comes to a close, the LA Kings rank atop the National Hockey League in a statistic you might never have dreamed possible just a few years ago – goals scored per game.

“We know we can score,” defenseman Drew Doughty said. “It’s something that, in the LA Kings organization since I’ve been here, we’ve always been more of a defensive team. This year, it just feels like we can score at will.”

With 39 goals from nine games played, the Kings certainly have scored. They’re currently one of just two teams in the NHL on the North side of four goals scored per game, as they conclude the month of October averaging an NHL-best 4.33 goals per game. In terms of total goals, the Kings are just one shy of league-leading Detroit, which has a game in hand. In six of their first nine games, the Kings have scored at least four goals, including five games with five-or-more goals.

Historically speaking, this has not been the Kings way in a long time, as Doughty alluded to above.

While this marked the eighth time in franchise history that the Kings scored at least 35 goals in their first eight games of the season, it had not happened in 30 years, dating back to the high-flying days of the 80’s and early 90’s, in the 1993-94 season, when Wayne Gretzky wore the white, silver and black. You have to go back to the 1990-91 season, when scoring around the NHL was higher than today, nearly at 3.5 goals-per-game, to find the last time the Kings had five separate games with five-or-more goals in that span.

It’s certainly been a high-flying start offensively to say the least.

Now, how did we get here?

It starts with having everybody involved.

“We’ve brought some guys in and we have every line producing right now, which is a good thing,” forward Adrian Kempe said. “For us, that hasn’t been the issue this year, with the goalscoring.”

The Kings come out of the month of October with all four of their forward lines scoring between six and nine goals at all strengths. All 12 forwards who have been a part of the team’s regular forward lineup has scored this season and 11 of the 12 have scored more than once. All four lines are rolling and all four lines have scored.

On top of the offensive contributions up front, the Kings have also gotten eight goals from their defensemen this season, with Andreas Englund joining the club with his first career NHL goal last night. No team in the NHL has gotten more goals from their blueliners so far this season and tomorrow’s game against Ottawa will feature the two teams at the top of the list, with the Kings and Senators squaring off at Canadian Tire Centre.

All good things when it comes to scoring goals.

Now, you can point to a number of things on either side of the line that might point towards how likely it is that the Kings can continue to score at this clip, but you could also ask how much it matters.

On one hand, the Kings are currently ranked second in the league in shooting percentage and shooting percentage is one of the most volatile stats around. You typically see it more with individuals, when there are breakout seasons with a shooting percentage at twice a career average. More often than not, it’s not a statistic that translates season over season. Sample sizes of any kind through nine games are small, but if you ask Todd McLellan, he’s understanding that the Kings are unlikely to shoot at a greater than 13-percent clip the rest of the way home, when asking about his team currently leading the NHL in both goals-per-game and, at the time, shooting percentage.

“One goes with the other, I don’t think you can lead the league in scoring with a really low shooting percentage and we’re a volume shooting team,” McLellan said. “Put all the math together, or whatever, and it makes sense that it will happen. I’ve heard the word normalized I don’t know how many times over the last few weeks and I’m hoping that we can use defensively too, to normalize that part of our game. Volume shooting, high conversion rate, you’re probably going to score a lot, the recipe is there, but I don’t expect that we can continue to stay at the shooting percentage we’re at right now. It is high, and we’re happy with it, but it will probably normalize.”

That brings up the other side of the coin, which is that the “normalization” in other areas, to use McLellan’s word, can help to perhaps counteract some of what could bring down that number.

For starters, the team’s two most dynamic forwards – Kevin Fiala and Adrian Kempe – have just two goals combined at 5-on-5. Kempe is a back-to-back 35-goal scorer and Fiala was on track for 25, if not 30 goals last season had he not suffered an injury in March. Fiala is a five-time 20-goal scorer and he’ll find the back of the net more regularly than he has so far as the season progresses.

Not that production has been an issue for either player, with a combined 21 points through nine games and both players at a point-per-game clip or better in the early goings, but both players are getting their chances and there will be positive regression towards the mean to come.

Fiala is a part of the Kings’ lowest-scoring line through nine games, despite having an eight-game point streak and 11 assists to his name, tied for the second most in the NHL. That line also includes Pierre-Luc Dubois and Alex Laferriere, both of whom are adapting to a new team early in the season.

“For our team, we’ve been together for along time, yet we brought key pieces in that have taken on a lot of responsibilities right off the bat, primarily Pierre-Luc,” McLellan said. “If you look at our power play situation, it’s different, it feels different. We lost some [right-handed shooters], some key people, and he’s trying to fit in there and it needs time.”

It’s not as if Dubois isn’t producing either, even if his high level of ability is capable of higher totals. He’s taken on quite a bit in the early goings, as he gets adjusted to new linemates and a new way of playing. We’re seeing the bursts of high-level play from Dubois more and more as the games have progressed, as he’s gotten more comfortable. Dubois trails only Trevor Moore in 5-on-5 goals per/60 and leads the team in high-danger chances in all situations. He’s generating looks and the production will come.

There’s also the other side of normalization, which the Kings believe they are starting to see here over the last two games.

While the Kings led the league in goals scored, they were also tied for the sixth-most goals allowed, at 3.57, before Saturday’s game against Vegas. Really, the turnaround on that side of things began when the Kings went down 4-1 midway through the first period in Arizona last Friday night. From that point on, the Kings have allowed four goals from eight-plus periods and now rank more towards the middle of the league in that statistic.

“Since we fell behind 4-1 in Arizona, I thought the periods we’ve played since then have been more of what the staff expected from the team and I’m sure the team expected from the team, than we saw earlier in the year,” McLellan added. “It’s hard work to do that every night, to have those details and to live up to the standard that we expect from each other. We’ve got to rest today and do it all over again tomorrow.”

Hard work indeed against an Ottawa team that presents offensive firepower. The Senators are averaging exactly four goals per game this season and as noted above, they’ve equaled the Kings in terms of goals from their blueline, led by Jakob Chychrun (4) and Jake Sanderson (3).

As they head into tomorrow, the Kings aren’t focused on replicating the month of October, but simply establishing the best possible version of the team they have. If they do those things, and continue playing the way they have over the last eight periods, the offense will continue to come.