Angeles Analysis – Time To Unexpect The Expected

Oscar Wilde coined the phrase “expect the unexpected.”

For the LA Kings right now, I think it should be a little bit different. Right now, it feels like it should be “unexpect the expected.”

Sounds dumb. But hear me out.

Over the last two games, the LA Kings produced their first and third highest expected goal totals at 5-on-5 this season. Last night in Detroit was a season high 4.38. In Columbus, the Kings came in at 3.53, their third highest total of the season. Against the Red Wings, the Kings were more than two expected goals ahead of their opposition, one game after a +1.6 margin against the Blue Jackets.

We all know the final scores, though, and you don’t get anything for expected goals. The Kings scored a total of three 5-on-5 goals in those two games and one of them was an own goal. Kevin Fiala’s nice individual effort against Detroit and Phillip Danault’s greasy, netfront goal in Columbus were the other two. Both plays involved 22 and 24, with Danault providing the screen on Fiala’s goal yesterday. Outside of those plays, chances have been flowing. They’re just not going in. Right now, the margin for error is too slim for those chances not to go in as they aren’t right now.

Guess that’s the problem with the expected goals metric, right? At least the one that’s publicly available to us. It’s simply an accumulation statistic that doesn’t take into account a number of factors. How many Grade A’s haven’t hit the net on this trip? Jim Hiller has brought it up now after consecutive games. Adrian Kempe took ownership of his own missed looks this morning. Others have done the same. Expected goals means that the high-danger chances, the scoring chances are accumulating positively. But there are a lot of factors between goals and expected goals and right now, the disparity is quite high. I am a law of averages guy, but the standings don’t wait for the other shoe to drop. It’s real goals right now that count.

While the disparity is new, the goal column being lower than it needs to be is not. Since January 1, the Kings have scored 22 goals from 11 games played. That’s the lowest number of total goals in the NHL and a ranking of 31st at two goals per game. In that span, the Kings are 5-5-1 but they’ve hit the three-goal mark only twice in that span, wins over Vancouver and New Jersey. A trio of 2-1 victories have kept the team’s record afloat during a trying time for the group offensively. In all six defeats, the Kings have scored two or fewer goals.

No one questions the way this team has committed defensively. Throughout the month of January, the Kings have allowed 2.18 goals per game, the third best clip in the NHL. They rank fourth on the season as a whole at a shade above 2.5 per game. That’s what’s helped the team continue to amass points as the goals haven’t come. I continue, though, to think back to the stated objectives at the start of the season. Finding a way to score more goals without compromising the defensive identity.

The Kings deserve credit for maintaining their defensive game without Drew Doughty. They deserve credit for establishing one of the hardest styles of hockey to play against in the NHL. Heard it from so many different voices. This is a hard team to play against. The Kings have defeated defending Stanley Cup Champion Florida Panthers and the current leader in points, the Winnipeg Jets, by identical 2-1 margins. You don’t win those playoff-style games without having that type of identity.

If the objective, though, was what it was stated to be, you can’t really l say it’s been accomplished to this point.

The Kings have exceeded the general narrative surrounding the team in training camp by developing an even better version of what they’ve found success with over the past three seasons. But right now, I think we’re seeing maybe a worst-case offensively of that approach. As the shooting percentage has dropped, as pucks are missing the net, as several players have hit a dry spell at the same time, that style of hockey hasn’t been enough to maintain the level of success the Kings had coming in.

Outside of Adrian Kempe and Kevin Fiala right now, the Kings haven’t gotten consistent, reliable offensive production this month from anywhere in the lineup.

Kempe’s play and production needs no explanation and I believe that Fiala has been at a higher level for a while now than he’s been given credit for. Now he’s getting rewarded, feeling “way better and more confident” than he did in the early stages of the season. He’s got seven points (2-5-7) in his last six games and he’s on pace for his second consecutive 29-goal season. Both goals were shots that beat a goaltender clean, too. The Kings are not a team filled with natural goalscorers so to have Fiala score those types of goals is important, because he is capable of doing it.

Outside of Kempe, no player has more than three goals in total in January. Only three goals this month have come from defensemen. It’s easy to want to point the finger towards the direction of one or two players, but only 4 of the 12 forwards to dress last night have multiple goals this month. Five have zero. If you blame one, you’re not seeing the entire picture. Combine that with reduced production from the backend and a power play that hasn’t scored outside of a three-in-three stretch and it is really starting to add up.

What it’s led to is a shooting percentage of 7.5 in all situations, the second lowest in the league this month. Compare that to 11.4 in the 2024 portion of this season, the ninth-best in the NHL. The message has been pretty consistent from countless players who have been asked the same type of question about the dearth of goals. The Kings need to simplify. They have to get pucks and bodies to those Grade-A areas. They’ve done a better job of that on this trip but they’ve still seen their high-danger shooting percentage fall from 23.3 percent in October – December to 15.3 percent in January as a whole.

As unsexy as it is, I’m not sure there’s a better way to get things back on track offensively than that. The Kings could add a more natural scorer via a trade, but cap ramifications would likely prevent that until Drew Doughty returns and the team can accrue space for the deadline, or salary going out. Still, while that could help and perhaps help to set the lineup and move struggling players around, that’s not a team-wide solution.

The Kings have a lot of players who work for their goals. That work hasn’t left. But that type of offense is difficult to consistently maintain over 82 games. It ebbs and flows. Right now, there’s a lot of ebb, I guess, and not enough flow. It will change at some point, if the Kings continue to do the right things and not cheat the game but that doesn’t change the fact that the this might not be all that high scoring of a team even when it does. Despite that, the Kings will win a lot of games down the stretch, but seeing things stack up right now presents some concern that it could happen again, at a more dangerous time. I think this is a team better built to win Game 83, but despite that, scoring two goals each night in a seven-game series isn’t going to be enough. This team doesn’t have a McDavid/Draisaitl combo to cover simultaneous slumps. Right now, we’re seeing the results when that happens.

The road ahead doesn’t get any easier, does it? Up next are the first, fifth and ninth ranked offenses in the NHL this season. Two goals is unlikely to cut it. I said at the start of this trip that I felt this was the most difficult trip of the season for the Kings. When you combine the opposition, the January grind and the fact that the Kings have been on the road for 20 of 24 days, they were always up against it on this one. I maintain that it is the hardest trip of the season. What exactly gets the offense going in the right direction, I suppose, is the multi-million dollar question. Identifying a problem is easy. Finding the solution is much harder. That is what is facing this team over the next three games and they’ll get another chance to do so tomorrow evening, in the building that hosted the Stanley Cup back in June. No better place to get it started.