As if the woeful and uninspired road trip wasn't frustrating enough, the Kings let not one, not two, but three two goal leads slip away on Wednesday in a wild end-to-end game against the Anaheim Ducks.
Then on the following night the Kings topped themselves in terms of frustration by getting heavily outposessed and outplayed by a Dallas team that was amongst the bottom of the conference. The team that has given up the fifth most goals in the league suddenly looked like a defensive stalwart against the Kings offense.
What's going on here??
Is this the same team we saw blast out the gates, ripping off six in a row and going 6-1-1 to open the year?
Doesn't seem like it does it?
Well that's because it really isn't.
Only 17 games in and It seems like the Kings have had anything and everything happen to them outside of a goalie injury (knock on wood).
Slumps, injuries, suspensions, benchings, emergency signings, salary cap hell scenarios...hopefully this is all just blowing out of the way early so January-April go much more smoothly.
I know some fans are probably already panicked and a a little frustrated, but I'm here to tell you to slow down just a bit. Frustration is warranted, but panic is probably premature.
This isn't the same team we started the year with and it is definitely showing.
Injuries
A part of the game you can never avoid. 82 games, around 6 months, a physically demanding sport...no team will ever get away without someone going on the shelf for a little bit. The Kings were fortunate enough last year to be one of the least injured teams in hockey. So far this year they haven't had that same luxury.
While the injury stints of some have been rather short, they have come at a time of the year when guys are just trying to get up to speed. All of a sudden, two, maybe three games in you have to almost hit the reset button as an injury puts you up for a few games.
This has already happened to Gaborik, Muzzin, and Kopitar, all of whom play major roles in the Kings numbers. All three have had very sluggish and below normal starts, and only now are we seeing glimmers of them righting the ship. While the trio still look very tentative and slow at times, there are signs of a pick up.
But still injuries hamper the Kings overall, as both Robyn Regehr and Alec Martinez are now sidelined with injuries. The latest to the triage is Alec Martinez, who apparently required surgery after suffering a finger injury in the game against Dallas. who apparently required surgery after suffering a finger injury in the game against Dallas.
Slumps
Martinez, Stoll, Brown, Greene, King, Kopitar, Williams...
Slumps. All of them at one point or another...or currently...are in slump mode. Stoll, Greene, Brown, and Martinez have all been on downward trends in possession this year and it has been killing the Kings depth. Not only has the depth been pressed for other reasons, it's being pressed even more because some guys just flat out aren't playing very well.
Graphs courtesy of Own The Puck
Matt Greene CF%
Jarret Stoll CF%
Dustin Brown CF%
Alec Martinez CF%
There is no question right now that the Kings are failing to obtain as much possession as previous years, as well as giving up more shots and goals than average. Couple this with the fact that several players are in goal scoring droughts and you are going to struggle to win games. The scoring has been extremely top heavy. Eight King forwards have a combined 17 goals for the Kings, while the line of Toffoli, Pearson, Carter have 20. Even that line has started to cool significantly as the trio have only struck for goal a combined two times in the last five games. Even the hottest of lines for the Kings has hit a rut.
Everything Else
It's hard to put into words how the suspension of Voynov has hurt the team. However, being that he is a legit top-4 defenseman, Sutter is now having to divide his 20+ minutes a night amongst many other players. The remaining players on the squad are having to play way more than they should have to. Many are playing more than they are capable of. Drew Doughty, while it is impressive that he is playing 30+ minutes a night, should not be playing that much. Sutter agreed with those sentiments when asked about it in last night's press conference.
On Drew Doughty logging 31:39 of ice time:He has been playing a lot of minutes. Do we like that? No. But that’s where we’re at. You know what? I look at that all the time, too. It’s too many minutes. He’s going to tell you he’s fine with it, but over the long haul, that’s too many. [Reporter: Is it one of those things where you just want the best guy out there as much as possible and deal with it later?] No. We’ve gone with five and six and tonight back to five again. It’s got to get back to it somewhere. As I said, he’s probably three or four there, and then everybody else is three or four more, too. It’s like I tell them, ‘You know what? You’ve got to play a little bit more and a little bit better.’ Not easy.
The depth has been tested to an extreme degree. Jamie McBain has been brought into the fold from free agency and has almost instantly been asked to step into a top-4 role. For McNabb it has been a trial by fire as well, as the young defenseman hasn't been able to ease into a role with the Kings but has rather been thrust into it by the amount of absences at the backend.
You can look at all these things in a positive way or a negative way.
Injuries will not be around forever. Poor play will eventually have to regress.
Or so you'd like to hope. Right now the Kings are in a tough stretch and they are going to have to lean on their top players and a little bit of good fortune to squeeze out some W's. They are still getting tremendous play from Jonathan Quick, which is a big piece of the equation of winning.
The rest of that equation is pretty touch and go right now.
There are pretty easy answers to why the Kings are struggling, but it doesn't make them any less concerning.
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