The defending Stanley Cup Champion Los Angeles Kings make their now annual visit to Consol Energy Center tonight to face the Penguins.
The Kings are one of the best teams in all of hockey, some consider them the gold standard. Playing against a team with such a high pedigree is what it is all about. How do you stack up against the best of the best?
Let’s take a look at the Kings.
The Kings have been a possession monster for the past number of years. Since 2011 they have had a Fenclose percentage as a team of 55.6%. That is incredibly high. In fact, it is #1 in the league during that time frame. They own the puck and as a result they suppress the other team’s ability to generate offense. They have only given up 25.3 shots on goal per game in that same time frame. However, this year that number has ballooned to 33.3 which is 26th overall in the league (small sample size I know).
One similarity the Kings have to the Penguins is that they too overpay for their goaltending. Quick plays an athletic style that is fun to watch, he also racks up the win totals. Combine the two and it is easy to from the narrative of an elite goalie. Neither style nor win totals is a proper way to judge a goaltender’s ability to stop pucks.
Jonathan Quick is often referred to as one of the elite goalies in hockey, but I don’t believe that to be the case at all.
The genesis of this talk stems from his electrifying playoff performance in 2012 when he picked up the Conn Smythe Trophy. The only difference between Quick’s 2011-12 performance and Marc-Andre Fleury’s 2007-08 performance is that Quick’s team won it all because they were the better team. Fleury would have won the Conn Smythe had the Penguins defeated the juggernaut 2007-08 Red Wings team which may be the best team of the analytics era. In the cases of both Quick and Fleury this was a level of play that was isolated and has not been matched since.
*Just so I’m on the record here, I don’t think Fleury is as good as Quick. I think Quick is better. His lows have not been as low as Fleury’s. The point here is that they both do not provide their teams good value for the money.*
The Kings won the Stanley Cup last year so it seems silly to criticize goaltending, but much like the Penguins in 2009, the Kings won in spite of below average goaltending because the team in front of the goalie was that great. There was a reason the Kings were down 0-3 against the Sharks and that reason was Jonathan Quick. If not for a Marc-Edouard Vlasic injury I don’t think the Kings survive that bad goaltending.
Similar to Fleury Jonathan Quick has not really outperformed his backups by a significant enough margin to justify the cap hit.
Jonathan Quick started to get a regular workload as a goalie in 2008-09. This chart will compare Jonathan Quick to his backups (Erik Ersberg, Jonathan Bernier, Martin Jones, Ben Scrivens) from 2008-14.
The league average for EVSV% falls in-between .921-.923% in any given year. It is fair to say that there is no discernable difference in the Kings goaltending when either Quick or his backup plays. The Kings have received league average goaltending, sometimes a shade higher.
Teams play better in front of their backups though…
*Numbers from even strength play only*
I guess not. Much like the Penguins the Kings are paying a premium now for goaltending when they really don’t have to and they will be paying for it until 2023. When you are as good as the Kings are, the goaltender is interchangeable. It’s like the running back position in football, it’s plug and play.
This could potentially pose a problem for the Kings down the road. As we know with Pittsburgh, every dollar counts in this cap era. When the Penguins had to pony up and pay its star players money ran out pretty quick. Well moving forward the money is going to start drying up for the Kings too.
Both Justin Williams and Jarret Stoll are unrestricted free agents at the end of the season while Tyler Toffoli, Kyle Clifford, Tanner Pearson, and Martin Jones are all RFA’s. Some of these young kids are going to get a nice raise, specifically Tyler Toffoli and Tanner Pearson who compose two-thirds of one of the best lines in hockey, “That 70’s line”.
When you combine Quick’s 5.8M contract with Dustin Brown’s 5.9M cap hit, and Mike Richards’ 5.75M contract I see a lot of money, but not a lot of value. This trio of contracts is on the books until at least 2020. Dustin Brown and Mike Richards’ style of play does not lend itself to aging well. The Kings are paying for past performance, not future performance. I think this has the potential to sting the Kings.
Anze Kopitar will be an unrestricted free agent at the conclusion of the 2015-16 season. I don’t believe for a second he will leave LA, but I do believe he will fetch a contract similar to the ones handed out to Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane. That will eat up even more cap space.
The Kings aren’t in dire straits by any stretch, but they are entering a transitional period where they are going to find out what the Penguins, Blackhawks and Bruins have. When it’s time to pony up the money, you’d better get good value throughout the roster to maximize potential of success. The Penguins have done a poor job of this and it is looking like the Bruins may also be on the road to doing a poor job. The Blackhawks had a fire sale after their first Cup win and had to rebuild their roster. They did so quickly, but with Toews and Kane set to get massive raises and a big goalie contract on the books, they too will see their money run dry again.
Sinking big money into the goaltender position seems to be the common denominator in each of those four teams. Only Rask strikes me as money well spent and that is because his numbers are way above average.
I think it will be interesting to see how the big money goalie contracts handcuff the teams who spend to the cap ceiling in the future. My guess is that they will regret those big contracts.
Enjoy tonight’s game.
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