LAK AT 38: PRETTY GOOD IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH

FORT LAUDERDALE, FL — So, if you think you’ve had a bad start to 2024, you’ve got nothing on the Los Angeles Kings. After a great start to the season, the Kings are in a deepening valley. They have yet to win a game in the calendar year and the losses have come in various forms but carry a thread – the inability to close out games when staked to leads with their latest loss an excruciating one.

A literal last-second overtime defeat to the red-hot Florida Panthers can’t be classified as rock bottom by earning a point, but given the long faces on Los Angeles’ management and staff after the stunning loss in which another third period lead was surrendered, made the postgame feel like a bottom.

The valley slid into over the past month hasn’t undone what the season’s early days produced but it does raise questions as to the legitimacy of the chatter and aspirations about a third Stanley Cup championship coming to the corner of 11th and Figueroa in downtown Los Angeles.

Even when things were rolling – a top offensive team and invincible on the road – Coach Todd McLellan parsed his words on the early success, reminding us that the level of play was at a pace that was not sustainable. Some things are easy to explain (the reduction in offense, the platinum road record), while others are not.

Through 38 games, only Anaheim and San Jose have less home wins than Los Angeles. A 7-7-5 home record isn’t a disaster, but the difference in execution between home and road efforts are stark. Two examples are the season sets against the Toronto Maple Leafs and Philadelphia Flyers. In both away contests, the Kings controlled the game throughout, and the outcomes (wins) were never in doubt.

Back home, the Flyers outworked them on the way to a 4-2 victory on November 11, while the Maple Leafs were the first team to shut them out this season with a totally out-of-character defensive performance in a 3-0 victory on January 2. The opposition in the early season home games was tough (Colorado, Carolina, Vegas, Winnipeg) but as the season lengthens, it’s a danger sign with the incomplete performances they continue to produce against lesser competition.

A month ago, the Kings were in a three-way dance with the Vegas Golden Knights and Vancouver Canucks for the top spot in the Pacific but the problem for Los Angeles is no longer those two teams, it’s the two others who are rapidly gaining on them in the proverbial rear-view mirror.

It’s not a shock the Edmonton Oilers have righted their ship and despite how you feel about their chances for a deep run in the post-season, they weren’t playing sub-.500 hockey for 82 games. But few saw the huge run the Seattle Kraken are presently on, fashioned primarily on the back (and glove and stick) of goalie Joey Daccord, the product of the unlikely college hockey machine at Arizona State University. Even with one-point losses in overtime or shootouts during this stretch, the gap has closed.

The mistakes made through this stretch are more subtle than glaring. A missed assignment here, a soft goal there, but the bigger issue is the lack of response when challenged. Los Angeles hasn’t been overmatched in this valley but their inability to get a play to stem the tide or win is a major factor. A 2-on-1 pass completed in October is now either blocked or misses connection. Leads that were forged in November evaporate in the late stages of a contest. Seven game winless streaks are never pretty and this one carries all the ugly characteristics.

Which leads us to the talk we need to have.

You know which one, about the prized possession the Kings had been chasing for a couple of seasons, P-L Dubois. Maybe referring to him by his government name, Pierre-Luc, will shake him out of this poor stretch of play. Maybe a move to the wing for a reset will work. Maybe a one game trip to the press box will do the trick, as it appears it has for Arthur Kaliyev, who came back from his one game banishment more focused and with improved decision making.

But all these courses of action are just that: maybes. It’s difficult to ascertain what motivates this player, to his credit he hasn’t avoided the media despite his sub-par performance. In the Washington and Tampa losses, I counted four goals (Capitals second and third goals, Tampa’s game tying and game winning goals) where he either made an error of commission (backhand pass to the middle in his defensive zone) or even worse, omission (lackadaisical defensive play/inability to win a puck battle). Those who didn’t like the Dubois deal are basking in the sunlight of “we told you so, we were right” glory and you can’t argue with them. At the end of the last homestand, Dubois strung together a couple of solid if not spectacular efforts but has regressed again to non-factor status. He was noticeable in the Florida game and came close to winning the game early in overtime, but he has yet to be their best player on any night. It doesn’t help that his style of play, his nonchalance on a team with hard workers like Trevor Moore and Blake Lizotte makes the optics even worse.

Yet even with Dubois’ poor start, the story has yet to be written on the trade that saw Gabe Vilardi, Alex Iafallo, Rasmus Kupari and a second-round pick to Manitoba. Those declaring the Jets won the trade are correct based on performance to date but it’s the equivalent of declaring the first horse out of the gate the winner of the Kentucky Derby. Whether it’s exercising patience, hoping his adjustment to the system and the Kings style of play completes soon, they’re locked into this player for the long term.

Could McLellan consider scratching Dubois for a wakeup call, a move that appeared to work for Kaliyev after his one game visit to the press box? That drastic move would be one of desperation for a team that isn’t quite desperate, not to mention the poor optics it would create for a player who signed a $68 million contract a little over six months ago.

When teams go into tailspins, the question of confidence comes up. In speaking with Kings players, I sense it’s more about eliminating mistakes than an erosion of confidence, but to say that the level of confidence that existed in the season’s opening weeks is the same isn’t accurate, either. Drew Doughty feels the group needs to learn to hold on to leads and how to win games in overtime.

“The mojo (in the room) isn’t too bad, we had a great pregame skating before the Florida game,” Doughty said Thursday. “We had a long meeting today and watched all the good stuff we are doing. Usually, you focus on the bad stuff, the mistakes you’re making. It was the first time in this (winless) stretch where we were watching the good stuff, we are doing to get our confidence back up.”

As for the team’s propensity to give back leads in games, Doughty was honest about the team’s approach to closing out games.

“I’ve had to talk about this my entire career,” he said. “When you’re up by a few goals in the third period, you think ‘we’ve got to get another goal’. It’s just human nature, you sit back and the other team steps on the gas pedal a bit more. It happens in other team sports and it’s something we’ve had to deal with, and I know we are going to get better at it. We have the team and leadership to do it.”

Trevor Moore is of the opinion that the team isn’t far from emerging from the tailspin as well.

“I think that we're really close,” Moore said. “It's frustrating, but we're close and I think that we could clean up a few things. (The team’s confidence) hasn’t wavered at all. We haven't gotten blown out of games, we're just right there (in turning things around). We're playing good hockey, it's just little moments and little structural things (that need to be corrected). We would like to be scoring more goals but at the same time it’s got to come both ways. We have to play better defensively as well and in playing better defensively, we are going to create more (opposition) turnovers.”

As the season lengthens and opposing teams have more video to study, there is a notion that there is a book on how to beat Los Angeles and it’s manifested in one particular metric, rush chances surrendered. Mike Kelly, an analyst for NHL Network, pointed out that before the winless streak, the Kings led the lead in the least amount of rush chances given up but now are last over the last seven games.

Rather than having a book on his team, McLellan sees his team’s lack of sharpness as to why more chances are being created.

“I think that teams are taking advantage of our sloppiness or our execution pace. We are who we are, and we play a certain way. But for us to be good at that, we have to get into position, we have to get there with pace and then when we're there we have to execute,” McLellan said after Thursday’s loss. “The tying goal in Tampa the other night, that structure base, that’s working into position we didn’t quite get there, and we paid the price for it. So, pace of play. When I say that, I think we immediately think oh, we’re going to skate fast with the puck and we’re on offense. No, pace of play is often working into position and creating a support network for your teammates.”

Though they played the Panthers evenly throughout the 64 minutes and 59 seconds, the inability to close out the game by making one more play or getting one more save weighs heavier as the winless streak continues. I chatted with Anze Kopitar postgame about where his team is and where it needs to be to get back to its winning ways.

“It feels like we’ve got to play a perfect game. Pretty good it’s not good enough right now, it’ll take a team effort to get out of it,” Kopitar explained. “We’re getting better, we’re not sloppy, we’re playing faster, more physical and we’re winning more battles. You got to find another gear to get out of this. It definitely feels like a loss, getting scored on late (in regulation) and obviously very late in overtime. Hopefully down the road, this point it’s gonna be big for us but right now it feels like a loss. When you’re in a seven-game skid the confidence definitely not sky high. But . . . it’s coming within this room to get out of the slump and get moving in the right direction.”

Could changes be made to the roster and even possibly behind the bench? Sammy Fagemo is burning up the AHL but to recall him would be at the cost of likely losing Jaret Anderson-Dolan to waivers as they did with Toby Bjornfot to Vegas. Given the Kings recent goal scoring struggles, the odds on that gamble seems to be lower than it was when Los Angeles reacquired him from Nashville on a waiver claim on November 11. They could insert Brandt Clarke into the lineup on a more regular basis but it’s uncertain how impactful either move would be.

The more drastic move would be to explore changing the coach but dismissing McLellan would be more about the results than execution. The razor-thin margin between winning and losing and the fact that Los Angeles hasn’t surrendered much defensively doesn’t seem to warrant that move but, in a results-oriented business, the team must find ways to win games.

While it’s hard to label Saturday’s game against the Detroit Red Wings as a must win at Game 39 with the back-to-back games against a Carolina Hurricanes team that is returning to form and a dangerous Dallas Stars club following the Detroit match, it feels like a “can’t lose” game.