LAK AT 7: NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

LOS ANGELES, CA – Two weeks into the NHL 2022-23 season, scoring continues an upward climb – teams are registering over six and a half goals per game, an increasing trend over the past five seasons.

As to why, maybe it’s the new generation of defenseman (Cale Makar is Exhibit A) or the overall increased speed and skill throughout rosters or perhaps a change in mindset when it comes to playing offense from coaches around the league. With apologies to Darryl Sutter, it’s no longer a 3-2 league in the regular-season.

Through seven games, the Los Angeles Kings seem determined to move that average even higher. While they remain true to their identity when it comes to playing close games – four of the seven were one-goal decisions and a fifth was settled in a shootout, that’s the only recognizable trait that remains from last season’s playoff team.

Last season, they hung around in games to outlast the opposition and when they came up short against the Edmonton Oilers, the glaring weakness was lack of offense – not a one-season deficiency but something that has been persistent since General Manager Rob Blake was installed in 2017.  He moved swiftly to add a point-a-game scorer in Kevin Fiala, made the decision (for now) to keep the dynamic Brandt Clarke and kept the faith that the youngsters that dotted the lineup would continue to progress and become established contributors.

And the offense is there – Los Angeles has gone from scoring 2.87 goals-per-game to 3.29 with the primary reason being production from its blueline.

Last season, the Kings were 28th in scoring by defensemen and they ended the five-game, 3-2-0 road trip with the sixth-highest scoring defense in the NHL.

Drew Doughty’s return hasn’t spurred the production, Clarke has yet to figure into the offensive flow with the limited ice time appropriate for a rookie (13:41), but to everyone’s surprise Matt Roy has become a significant part of the offense; a solid stay-at-home defenseman who is within one goal of tying his season-high in goals (4) with the season in its infancy.

But there’s a cost to this year’s model. Instead of never being out of a game by employing a low event, shot suppression style, the Kings are playing a “no lead is safe” style of hockey. It’s a brand that is more entertaining for fans and gives the media more to analyze, but unless a degree of structure is deployed to their 60-minute performances, playing the type of hockey demonstrated on a what was a successful but not resounding roadtrip, isn’t sustainable winning hockey.

What ails a team that possesses the 29th worst defense in the NHL? When you’ve surrendered 4.43 goals-per-game (a staggering number and yes, even worse than the Anaheim Ducks and San Jose Sharks), it’s not just one thing.  In no order, contributing factors are:

• Game management. A term that has been thrown around freely since opening night. Yes, Sean Durzi should have gotten into Victory Formation in the final seconds against Vegas and his risk/reward game has been an adventure, but he’s had plenty of company. The propensity to take penalties hasn’t contributed directly to losses (the penalty kill has improved slightly) but it disrupts momentum inside of games and lessens the impact of the ability to draw penalties (-crazy stat – LA leads the NHL both in powerplay time and penalty kill time).

• Team chemistry. For a team that didn’t make wholesale changes to its roster, they appear at times to be strangers on the ice. The puck possession at the 5-on-5 play darlings of last season have morphed into a bottom-third Corsi team with the top two lines (Anze Kopitar and Phillip Danault’s) being the biggest culprits between today and last season. The line of Fiala with Kopitar and Adrian Kempe has work to do on the defensive side of the puck and the Danault line has been rounding into shape as the roadtrip closed. The absence of Alex Iafallo is more impactful here than most think, he wasn’t a “luxury” forward ($4 million cap hit playing third line minutes) because there isn’t a similar winger to replace him. Coach Todd McLellan said Jaret Anderson-Dolan may be an option with Byfield and Vilardi, a player whose speed and puck retrieval ability may complete the line better than Arthur Kaliyev, who was first up to fill the role.

• Getting saves, not just the big ones. Even if you deplore advanced stats, having both your goalies ranked in the top 10 in negative expected goals above average is a bad thing.  Both Jonathan Quick and Cal Petersen have sub.-900 save percentages and except for Petersen’s final 10 minutes of regulation and shootout in Nashville, wins have come despite their goaltending.

• Lack of a shutdown line. Do they have a stopper line that McLellan can trust in the final minutes while protecting a one-goal lead? Part of Danault’s slow start shows in the faceoff circle but Kopitar (61.7%) and Blake Lizotte (57.3) have been strong at the dot; it may be more a question of which wingers to deploy at crunch time alongside the pivots. Fiala and Kempe are not shutdown defenders while Brendan Lemieux and Carl Grundstrom provide value on an energy line but not as superior defensive players.

There was more to fix than anticipated but the team doesn’t seem to be overly concerned with the calendar still reading October. Doughty was frank about how things need to change after a full practice on Monday that featured the familiar 1-3-1 defensive scheme that successfully frustrated opponents’ last season.

“That’s what we’re supposed to do, we’re supposed to defend the other team,” Doughty said about the blueline group. “We’re supposed to be more offensive, but we need to get back and play better defense. It’s easy to balance the two (the offensive push and defensive responsibility) out. Don’t take high risks, make the right play at the right time when you can jump into the offense you do it, but you just can’t create offense from nothing. If you (the defensemen) do things the right way, the points will come your way.”

Doughty took accountability for the play of the blueline, but he noted that the level of support from the forwards must rise as well.

“It’s not all on the defense, I’ll tell you that much. We need more support, we want to be more aggressive on the forecheck with the defense and in turn, the forwards have to support us. They do 80 percent of the time, but the other 20 percent is catching us right now. We were watching clips of the Pittsburgh game (a 7-1 rout by the Penguins) and the decisions we’re making offensively are affecting us defensively. That game got out of hand so maybe that why it was happening, but it was happening way too often. We were losing guys, 3-on-2 against, breakaways, 2-on-1’s. If we want to be more aggressive, we need more coverage and be smarter with our aggression.”

All of it – the scheme, decision making and goaltending – will get a stiff test on the three game homestand with Tampa Bay, Winnipeg and Toronto visiting downtown L.A. this week. All three teams having formidable offensive players that need to be defended as the Kings attempt to win their first home game of the 2022-23 season.