LA Kings: Has Jim Hiller fixed LA’s structure?

If you subscribe to the adage that defense wins championships, then LA Kings interim head coach Jim Hiller is your guy. For anyone wondering if Hiller would bring a more offensive approach to the team when he took over, it’s been quite the opposite.

Despite a 23-15-10 record, Todd McLellan‘s Kings won only five of the last 20 games in his tenure, leading to his firing. LA was always a good possession team under McLellan, but everything that could go wrong in those fateful 20 games seemingly did.

Enter Jim Hiller.

In 23 games under their former Assistant Coach, the LA Kings have gone 15-7-1 – a .674 points percentage which is the fifth highest in the NHL – and the ship has seemed to have steadied.

Hiller, who has been tasked with running the power play the last two seasons, is known as a more offensive-minded coach. However, in his brief time at the helm, Hiller has really tightened the clamps and has the team playing stingy, structured, defensive hockey.

Let’s dig into some 5-on-5 numbers, courtesy of Natural Stat Trick.

Despite having performed worse in the overall shot share and shot quality, the Kings under Hiller have controlled the actual goals on the scoreboard much more than they did under McLellan. The 58.4% clip is good for third in the NHL.

Generally speaking, I’m not inclined to like the end product outperforming the actual process, but we’ll see if there’s more to this.

Starting with the offensive side of the puck, it’s been considerably worse under Hiller:

So much for the new offensive approach.

Perhaps, though, Hiller wasn’t brought in to change much offensively. The Kings, for better or for worse, are built to win games 2-1 or 3-2. Hiller knows this and given their current roster construction, it doesn’t make much sense to try to play in a way that the team isn’t built for. So, he needed to fix the overall structure and tighten things up. Has that happened?

It’s kind of a mixed bag. The Kings are allowing more shot attempts and more high-danger chances under Hiller while the shots on goal and expected goals against are a virtual wash. That said, the 1.7 goals against per 60 is #1 in the NHL. This is where it’s important to look at that column all the way over to the right. Unironically, LA’s .934 save percentage under Hiller is 2nd in the NHL.

It isn’t always as simple as shooting percentage and save percentage, but when looking at the rolling averages from Evolving Hockey, there’s a fairly obvious correlation to make.

If you were someone that wasn’t a believer in the Vancouver Canucks earlier this season because of their elevated PDO, you might want to look away.

What does this all mean?

I’ll say, that I think there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the Kings with the biggest one being health. Viktor Arvidsson is healthy (for now) and the team hasn’t lost with him in the lineup this season. His offensive impacts in his small sample have been excellent.

Adrian Kempe and Mikey Anderson have shown no ill effects from their missed time either.

While the team’s shooting percentage under Hiller is higher than it was under McLellan, it’s still in the bottom ten in the NHL, so it’s not as if it’s unsustainably high. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect the LA goaltenders to play at a .934 clip the rest of the way, but as long as it doesn’t crater (I don’t see why it would) then it should still be fine.

The real question is whether this is going to work in playoffs. I know the belief is that the defensive teams are more likely to win in the postseason, but the last two Stanley Cup Champions could put the puck in the net.

In 2021-22, the Colorado Avalanche scored 3.4 goals per 60 at 5-on-5 (2nd in those playoffs) and 4.1 per 60 overall (1st in the playoffs). Last season, Vegas scored an impressive 3.7 goals per 60 at 5-on-5 and 3.9 overall – both marks led the playoffs.

When the LA Kings won their last Stanley Cup in 2014, they scored 2.8 goals per 60 at 5-on-5 and 3.2 overall. While those numbers led during that era’s playoffs, the organization is seemingly trying to win the same way ten years later. If the last two Cup winners are any indication, it’s not going to work.

I certainly have my doubts, but I will credit Hiller for identifying the team’s strengths and weaknesses and having them play to the structure they were built for. The verdict is still out on if it’s going to be good enough after Game 82.

Data via Natural Stat Trick, Evolving Hockey, and HockeyViz

Main Photo Credit: Juan Ocampo / NHLI / Getty Images