Making the NHL playoffs is hard enough for any given team. Out of 32 NHL teams, only 16 teams end up battling for the cup. That’s just half of the league. But in the end, only one team can end up winning the Stanley Cup, and there’s no second place award. Last year, the LA Kings finally made the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time since the 2017-18 season.
Since that season, it’s been a difficult path to building a future contending team. While the rest of the league didn’t think the Kings would make the playoffs last season, they managed to turn heads and end up clinching a playoff spot.
As the playoffs were highly anticipated, the excitement was short-lived. The LA Kings went through a brutal, stressful, and tiring playoff series against the Edmonton Oilers, where they fell in seven games in enemy territory. The boys in black and silver battled through countless injuries as they missed Drew Doughty and Viktor Arvidsson throughout all of the playoffs. They also had four different players who battled through separated shoulders, along with other injuries as well.
Even though the LA Kings weren’t the most active team during the off-season, it’s tough to admit that it wasn’t fun. Acquiring one of the best 5 on 5 scorers in Kevin Fiala right before the NHL entry draft was huge. Of course, losing a first-round pick did hurt, but the Kings found themselves the first-line scorer they were looking for.
By not making any additional moves, it showed they have full trust in all of their young players to continue to develop, and how we could see some of those young guns take a step further into their careers and finally play up to their potential.
On paper, the Kings have it all figured out. They believe that the lack of scoring will be fixed, and they think that everything they had last year was stable enough to continue with this year. But what are some things that the Kings need to fix that don’t show up on the daily lineups?
1. Fix the power play
It’s most obvious that one of the most frustrating things with the LA Kings last season was the powerplay success. Or rather, the lack of it.
The Kings had one of the worst power plays in the NHL, finishing sixth-last in the regular season at 16.13%, and finishing fourth-last in the playoffs at 12.50%. Simply put, the power play was not sufficient enough for a playoff team.
One of the scariest things for the Kings is how much each team in the Pacific division improved over the summer. Each team added tons of skill, and each of those teams will see improvement in their respective powerplays. As we know, the Kings didn’t acquire any big-name players outside of Fiala, but they did hire a new assistant coach in Jim Hiller.
Hiller was the only positive thing with the New York Islanders last year. The Islanders were disappointing, but their power play was surprisingly decent as the Isles finished 12th in the NHL at 22.12%. Bringing Hiller to run the power play will be a huge game changer for the Kings.
One of the biggest issues that seemed to annoy everyone was how the Kings didn’t have a player in the bumper spot. Could you imagine not using one of the best strategies in modern day hockey? The Kings had to deal with that all of last year.
Above we can see a perfect example of how there’s no usage of the bumper position. We see two players at the half-wall, followed by two players standing higher than the hash marks and one player in front of the net. The bumper spot stays wide open with no Oiler or King there.
Here is a team properly using the bumper spot on the power play:
The player sits open and with a clean shot right at the net while the passer sends it right onto his stick. As the player opens up his stick, he gets himself a golden scoring chance. Even if it doesn’t work, there’s another player in front of the net waiting to pounce on a rebound.
Lucky enough for the Los Angeles Kings, we’ve seen Hiller consistently use the bumper strategy in New York.
As hiring a new coach does help the Kings out with the structure of the powerplay, we can’t forget that a lot of it depends on the players. We know that the Kings have oodles of proficient players, so we need to see them utilize the opportunity to play a much more fair and well-built structure on the mad advantage.
2. Continue dominant defensive play
While the want for a new defenseman that can play a solidified two-way game was evident this summer, the Kings ended up staying put and not changing a single thing on the back end except signing depth AHLer Tobie Paquette-Bisson.
Of course, this had a few people rattled, but it’s comforting to know that management truly believes in the young talent that the Kings have. They’re clearly invested in analytics, too.
So many people can recall the times when we saw LA defenders get beat out wide multiple times this year, and if that wasn’t enough, some dumb mistakes set the fanbase over the edge.
It is, of course, understandable. Whenever a bad play happens, fans and spectators will tend to remember that more than a quiet, good play. People get more emotionally involved when a player makes a bad play because it sticks out more than a small good play does. That’s exactly what the defensive core went through last year.
Too many times we saw defenders get beaten out or miscommunicate with one another, but we’re here to inform you that all is well and it will end up working out.
The LA Kings were one of the best two-way teams in the NHL doing better than teams like the Edmonton Oilers and the St. Louis Blues. In the chart above we can visualize how the LA Kings maintained a high xGF/60 while staying strong on the back end with a serviceable xGA/60. Of course, the Kings had a lot of issues with finishing, but the opportunities will present themselves, and we could see some players burst out of their scoreless bubble.
Todd McLellan has done a terrific job with the defensive side of things. The LA head coach has mastered how to play a very silent yet dominant defensive game that helped the Kings make the playoffs last year.
Los Angeles vastly outshot their opponents, and we can all recall how that hurt the Kings when it came to finding the back of the net. The Kings would put up 40+ shots in a game, but only two or three of them would go in, while 3-4 goals would be coming back either way.
It sucked. But one of the things overlooked is how shooting so much and keeping the puck out of the defensive zone suppressing shots helped the Kings in countless ways.
Just like the xGF/60 vs. xGA/60 chart, the LA Kings were one of the best teams when it came to on-ice 5-on-5 corsi. Shooting the puck so much more than taking in shots demonstrated how beneficial the defensive core was last year. Let’s not forget how they were missing Doughty for most of the season, Mikey Anderson for 20 games, Alex Edler for half of the year, and Sean Walker for nearly the entire season.
I wouldn’t underestimate the power that the defensive core has. With all the young talent getting better and all the players becoming healthy, the Kings have a real shot at having one of the better defensive structures in the NHL next year.
3. The young players must show up
We’ve all talked about how big of a year so many young players need to have, and it’s all true. Kings fans are anticipating having all of their rookies make a huge push for a full-time role with the main club this year, and who knows where that could go?
Players like Arthur Kaliyev, Quinton Byfield, and Gabriel Vilardi are the youngsters who must take a massive step up in their games this season.
For Kaliyev, the former second round pick has some of the best scoring potential from anyone in his 2019 draft class, and it will be time for him to use it. With more power play time and a much more developed shot, it would be nice to see Arty hit at least 20 goals this year. As LA struggled to score last season, they will want to rely on Kaliyev to do the job now.
Byfield was a second overall pick in the 2022 NHL entry draft and he’s had multiple setbacks which have made it an uncomfortable expressway to the NHL. First, it was Covid that had him play in the AHL instead of the OHL. Then, as he was heading into the 2021-22 season, he suffered an injury that held him back multiple months. When he played, he showed signs of being a reliable defensive player but he lacked production and offensive capability. This year, Byfield will likely get a look on the third line, and it’s time for the 20-year-old to prove he’s worthy of a top two NHL draft pick.
Vilardi has had a brutal road to the NHL, too. Injuries have held him back along with consistency troubles. Bouncing around from the NHL and the AHL, Vilardi looked like he couldn’t find a permanent role anywhere. But we can all agree that Gabe looked great in every single one of his games this year, and that we can hope he ends up playing on the team in a full-time role. Scoring three goals and one assist in the last two games of the season was huge! Hopefully, it’ll transition into next season.
As for every other young player, we have to hope they do better than how they did last year.
When it came for goals plus-or-minus per 60, the rookies did not look favorable. A lot of them suffered, and only a couple were mediocre. None of them did good enough to be considered above average.
If the Kings want to become a better team and want to use those prospects in the way they hoped to, the young players must put up better numbers analytically and in basic stat form. A lot of these players did just “ok” for their first years and second years, but now that we’re heading into “prove it” time of the rebuild, it’s time that we see these young players finally take flight.
Next season will be a huge season for the LA Kings and it will be their opportunity to show their potential and finally put all that pain and hard work into motion. It will be time to set the tone for the team for the future. Fixing up for their mistakes and even doing what they did right even better, will be the reason as to why the Kings improve.
If we want to see the team do much better, these three steps are just the start to improve. In order to become a true cup contender, the Kings must continue to build their team and improve on and off the ice. These three things are only the starting point. We have a long and difficult road to go through.