It's never a playoff series until someone loses at home.
The Kings have done a tremendous job of not just making this a playoff series, but of taking home-ice advantage and series control completely away from the Anaheim Ducks.
With the 3-1 victory last night at Honda Center, the Kings go up 2-0 and now head home to Staples Center with a chance to potentially close the series out on home ice.
While I personally thought the series could be a short one I didn't see it playing out quite the way it has.
What do I mean?
Well, the Kings have completely flipped the regular season script on the Ducks. I theorized that the Kings would be better served playing the Ducks based on the extreme amount of possession they had in the regular season games they played this year. Despite the results, the Kings were most games the better team on the ice.
Despite a rather dismal record, the Kings have actually played very good games against the Ducks but have been thwarted by the classic problem of not being able to finish chances. In fact, the four games the Kings have played against the Ducks rank inside the top 20 of of the season in terms of corsi and possession numbers. (6th, 8th, 12th, 17th).
What has happened thus far in this series is that the Kings have become the Ducks of the regular season.
The possession numbers were relatively close in Game 1, whereas Game 2 the Kings were blown away.
Take a look at the graphs from Games 1 and 2.
Game 1
Game 2
Thank you to Extra Skater for providing the stats.
Pretty interesting stuff.
Game 2 more so than Game 1 for the reason that despite an extreme difference in possession stats, the Kings never really looked out of control in that game. The opportunities were coming from bad areas and non-threatening areas. Jonathan Quick had to make, maybe, 3-4 real crucial saves. The rest were pretty standard saves with the defenseman boxing out and clearing away the trash. If anyone here is a Premier League fan, I'd say that this was much akin to Chelsea manager José Mourinho employing the tactic of "Parking the bus."
The Kings looked perfectly content on allowing the Ducks to have possession last night from about the middle of the second on. Furthermore, they looked to be in clock management mode from about 10 minutes left in the third until the end of the game. Interesting tactics, but not out of the ordinary to what we've seen before with the Kings. With the lead, they sat back, played three across the blue line and two at the red line and told Bruce Boudreau and the Ducks "Alright, earn it."
It doesn't make for very exciting hockey (or football since I did mention Mourinho...) but it gets the job done and can frustrate your opponent.
The matchups have pretty much gone as expected, with Kopitar and Getzlaf meeting the majority of minutes.
Game 3 matchups. Kopitar saw 77% of his minutes against Getzlaf, 86% versus Fowler. pic.twitter.com/VLJ3ko1IiS
— Robert P. (@RobertJFTC) May 6, 2014Boudreau was trying to get Getzlaf out against Stoll for a short period of time but when the game got let it became negligible who was on the ice, Getzlaf was going out there. It also should be noted that Jarret Stoll had a particularly strong game in controlling opponents, so Getzlaf against Stoll might not be a favorable match-up for the Ducks either.
Quite frankly it's leaving the Ducks relying on scoring depth from the bottom lines to win games. The Perry/Getzlaf line is going to potentially chip in 1-2 goals a game, but the scoring has to come from somewhere else also if you are the Ducks.
The series has been an interesting one so far in terms of the strategy. But on par with the Kings of the postseason, it seems that teams are having trouble figuring out where to get offense from. Since the first three games of the Sharks/Kings series, the Kings have allowed only 8 goals in 6 games. Classic playoff Kings.
We'll see if the strategy can continue to pay off. As Kings fans should know, no deficit is too deep for a team to overcome. It isn't over until it's over. This is, however, a tremendous start for the Kings, who have now wrestled home ice advantage away from the 3rd best regular season home team in hockey.
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Jeff Schultz made his King debut last night, and despite having some pretty nasty possession stats, he passed my eye test.
The 28-year old was making his King debut, in the 2nd game of the 2nd round, on the road...no easy task really. He made some pretty key plays late in the game, and for the most part was pretty unnoticeable. That's definitely a good thing for a shutdown D man to be. He also had a ton of defensive zone starts (2nd most on the team) and was called upon late in the game by Darryl Sutter when the seconds were winding down. He also played some on the penalty kill, which again, shows that Sutter has some trust in the big man.
All in all I felt pretty good about Schultz's game, however, it was just one game. We'll see what he brings to the table for the remainder of the series. He has big shoes to fill, as Robyn Regehr was an absolute stalwart for the second half of the Sharks/Kings series. So far, so good though for the off-season "insurance policy" pick-up by Dean Lombardi.
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Speaking on defenseman, I feel like we are seeing a coming of age by Alec Martinez.
I joked last night on twitter that the first period summary was this:
First period summary for #LAKings: pic.twitter.com/u0wxinDrp5
— Jason Lewis (@SirJDL) May 6, 2014But in all seriousness, Martinez has been asked to step up and he has done so. This isn't just a task that he was asked to do in the post-season either. Anyone remember back around the Olympic break when Martinez was getting his fair share of healthy scratches? Then there was the amazing stretch run he put together where he had points in 14 of his final 21 games. Now, with injuries he is being asked to step up even more. Martinez has carried the hot hand into the post-season with 5 points in 9 playoff games thus far.
Hopefully the 26-year old can continue the strong play and help lessen the severity of missing personnel.
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and finally, Corey Perry, you're such a cool guy.
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