The Kings are a good defensive team.
They are a good team for various reasons, but mainly it is due to discipline, responsibility, and spacing.
Each of these have their own facets to them. To be disciplined you have to be smart and aware. To be responsible for your own area of the ice you have to be aware, smart, and trust your teammates. Same could be said for spacing. There are actually a ton of very small things like that that often make up larger more encompassing definitions of plays. Good active sticks, foresight, good first step, gap control etc. etc. Most games those things are challenged.
And before we go deep into breaking down some plays of Kings defensive mishaps, know this: These do not happen all that often. Breaking down breakdown pieces, as always, serve as a tool to you readers for something to look for during the game. A certain play that may give the Kings troubles, and that you may see teams trying to execute against them.
This time, we are looking at some very specific plays. Plays that often develop behind the net, and sometimes use the Kings own "Home plate" collapsing defensive system against them.
Let's explain what we mean here.
Here is a good look at a play that developed from behind the net during the Kings trip up through Canada.
This is pretty standard. They collapse deep, normally with the two Dmen and the center. Your wings will play out further and push chances away and help close gaps on point men and floating wingers. The general idea is that you want to keep everything to the outside, to the lowest risk area of the ice as possible. When you look at scoring chance data, the Kings do, for the most part, a really really good job of limiting those chances and the high danger chances which come further into the slot. According to data on War on Ice, the Kings give up the 6th fewest scoring chance against in the league, and will probably finish inside the top 10 on the year. High-danger chances against are sitting currently at 4th best in the league.
A lot of this has to do with the Kings spacing in the D zone.
Here is a rudimentary look at the Kings collapse
It works in a way that takes away passing lane through the center, and with wingers pressing forwards in pursuit further out.
Teams try to expose the Kings in two ways with this:
They do it the Blackhawks/Stars/Predators way, and that would be with rotations and active D in order to open up seams in higher scoring areas. Speed can kill, and if teams are allowed to attack space with speed, it can be troublesome. In terms of activating D, it can add another facet to an attack that the Kings weren't expecting, creating gaps in coverage and mismatches.
Then you get teams like San Jose and Vancouver who play from behind the net on the cycle and try to carve the Kings open with incision-like passing. This also relies on an element of speed, as players will try to create a cycle that separates players from the targets in a more one-on-one manner.
Both kinds of plays have success, and it kind of depends on what the situation is and the opponent. If in zone breakdowns happen, it is usually something stemming from these plays. But more specifically to the Kings, when the plays start getting hinged behind the net, that is when things get somewhat scary.
Let's look at some examples.
Here is a fresh breakdown from yesterday's loss against Dallas.
This is an example of a player pursuing too aggressively behind the net. That player would be Milan Lucic. While it is not the worst idea in the world for Lucic to go for a big hit on Faksa, the puck carrier, there is already a pursuing player in the form of Jake Muzzin. Thus dominoes start to fall one by one, and rather quickly, as the play breaks down to an open goalscorer in Patrick Eaves.
The spacing here, becomes an issue because you have one player covering two holes the best he can. Schenn, is the unfortunate victim of an over pursuit and poor situational read by Lucic. As you can see, he is caught standing sheepishly behind the net without a soul covered as the play breaks down. He went for a big hit behind the net when he did not need to, and it cost his team.
That is a bit of a broken play to be fair though, but it still shows how troubling it can be when a behind the net play breaks. To go back to our diagram of the Kings collapse. Eliminate one of the high wingers, and all of a sudden there is acres of space to be had for attacking forwards. They can hit scoring areas with speed, and start to pull defenders out of position. There are also players trying to potentially react to an open player, ergo leaving ANOTHER open player. In this case, the open player ended up being Roussel, and then by nature the goalscorer Eaves.
Let's look at another, play where going behind the net caused issues.
In the most recent Kings-Sharks game, Melker Karlsson scored a cheeky goal by sliding in between the Kings center and defenseman as Jake Muzzin pursued Wingels into the corner. This was, to a degree, using the Kings reliance on structure and discipline against them.
Lecavalier and Schenn played this play like Muzzin was going to be a static defender next to the net. Problem was, he wasn't there. He was pursuing the puck, which is totally fine. The problem here relates to read and react defense. When Schenn and Lecavalier saw Muzzin deep, there needed to be a read and react coverage. Karlsson astutely attacks the space vacated by a pursuing Muzzin, while a stationary Lecavalier and Schenn play the play as if Muzzin was standing there blocking the passing lane next to the net. This is a great example though, since you can see the Kings normal set up sans the LD, and how that can cause issues.
For the most part, this is a read play for Schenn to make. Schenn stepping across would be the most simple form of defending this play. However, since Karlsson came streaking in from the back side, it may be on Lewis, who peels off, or Lecavalier to communicate that there is a man coming. While Muzzin is certainly allowed to finish his check and continue his pressure of the carrier on this play, the play behind him when he vacates his spot to do so has to be covered. It wasn't, and the Sharks scored a relative tap in.
Sometimes it comes in other forms. See if you can spot what happens on these breakdowns in regards to who is covering the behind the net player or how the play grows from there:
If you were thinking: McNabb caught low, Carter doesn't slot across to cover the center, you were spot on.
Carter not moving across left a lane down the center you could drive a truck into. That truck came in form of a point shot that eventually found twine.
Here is another look at an inventive little misdirection play by the Bruins that carves the Kings open.
Goodbye Kopitar, goodbye Scuderi, and the Kings now have a wide open slot that is found by an unfortunate turnover by Kopitar. The key here is that the Bruins were able to draw two Kings front net pillars down below the net. Few goals are scored from directly behind the net, which might be a key to think about when asking yourself as a player "Should I be pushing down to cover Marchand?" (In the case of Scuderi). With the season Marchand is having, Scuderi probably thought it natural to try and eliminate him as a threat.
Don't feel too bad Scuds, it happens to everyone.
In this play against Winnipeg, Muzzin and Martinez do a pretty poor job communicating who is going after the carrier and who is remaining out front. The result? Ugliness in the form of a wide open goal.
That's mainly on 6/27. Though you'd like the back winger (Lucic) to read that (Since he had a good view) + slot down pic.twitter.com/V85Wl8jX6Z
— Jason Lewis (@SirJDL) March 25, 2016
This is a great play from the Jets also, who used another forward to drag Kopitar away from the front of the net. You do not say it often, but perhaps this play is on Kopitar also for vacating his spot and opting for a more man to man coverage instead of the home plate zone.
It also happened to young Kings center Nic Dowd, who is on his first call up. He was not punished for it, but he too got caught going down low in support of his defense, leaving the slot uncovered.
You are starting to get a feel for it now right?
It is a domino effect with the Kings defense. They are SO structured, SO disciplined, that sometimes that can be the key to opening them up. When you see one player pursuing...not necessarily out of position, but in a spot not normal for them, you know there is something open elsewhere. The aggression they play with can also be used against them, as exposing them for over-pursuing can lead to tap ins, or just altogether horrid breakdowns like this one in Ottawa (Which may contend for bad breakdown of the year). The anticipation by Doughty, the over-pursuing Shore, and the simple misstep of Brayden McNabb, leads to a wide open opportunity with no one in sight.
Abandon home plate!
Like stated earlier, it is easy to sit here and pick out penultimate breakdowns and make an example of them, but in reality they do NOT happen that often. That is why the Kings are one of the best defensive teams in hockey. Nevertheless they DO happen, and a lot of them come in the same form. If I can see it, if you can see it, I can guarantee you there are coaches in the NHL that can see it and are trying to expose it when they play LA.
The other thing to take into consideration with almost ALL of these "slide over and cover" breakdowns is that they happen in a near instant. Like the Karlsson goal, Schenn would have had to react at almost split second speed to take that play away. That is where the communication aspect is key, and the eyes and voices of your teammates are also your eyes. Still, some of these are just flat out good plays by opponents that were aimed specifically at spreading the Kings out and cutting through their tough to break home plate collapse.
Teams moving plays from out behind the net to the slot has given the Kings a few problems this year. Definitely look for that in the future as we head down the stretch and into the playoffs. Specifically into the post-season, where a troublesome play like that could become a key element in breaking a seven game series.
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