Can the L.A. Kings Pull Out of Their Tailspin?
Can the L.A. Kings Pull Out of Their Tailspin?
Once the league's early-season darlings, Los Angeles badly needs a win heading into the All-Star break.
For the Los Angeles Kings, this weekend’s NHL All-Star break can’t come soon enough. Once upon a time, L.A. had started the season as one of the league’s hottest teams, and looked capable of winning a playoff series for the first time since hoisting the Stanley Cup in 2014. But after posting an impressive 16-7 record (with a +1.6 goals-per-game differential) through early December, the Kings have cooled off considerably since then.
In fact, that’s probably a colossal understatement. Since Dec. 8, they have the league’s third-worst record (6-18); only the dreadful San Jose Sharks and Chicago Blackhawks are worse. They’ve lost four straight heading into Wednesday’s game against the Nashville Predators, and 14 of their past 16. As I wrote on Notes, if you plot out the Kings’ Elo rating for every day of this season, it looks kind of like Mount Everest — and that’s a bad thing, since L.A. is currently sitting back at base camp, far from the summit.
We knew the Kings still had weaknesses to shore up even when they were at their best early on, but it was hard to envision them sliding quite this much, this quickly. Going back to the 1967-68 NHL expansion, only 18 teams have ever gained as many Elo rating points from preseason to their peak — then lost as many points after their peak — as the 2023-24 Los Angeles Kings have.
If we’re searching for culprits for L.A.’s slide, there are a few factors, some of which were more predictable than others:
Mediocre goaltending. As it turns out, 36-year-old journeyman Cam Talbot was not going to maintain a .933 save percentage all season long. Ever since the Kings’ slide began, he has an .887 mark — league average is .903 — and while David Rittich has emerged as a sharper option recently, L.A. ranks 11th-to-last in SV% since early December.
The fountain of youth was a mirage. Two of the leading men driving L.A.’s early success were Drew Doughty and Anže Kopitar, both of whom had been on the Kings’ last Stanley Cup squad. It was impressive when the thirtysomething pair combined for 17 goals, 38 points and a +29 plus/minus in the team’s first 23 games of the season, but ever since they have been far more pedestrian (9 goals, 30 points and a minus-5 in 24 contests), producing numbers in line with their previous track records and ages.
The breakouts have gone back in. One of the cool things about this Kings team was that it featured multiple generations of players combining to elevate L.A. back to championship contention. But in addition to the elder statesmen regressing, 28-year-old Trevor Moore has dipped from 22 points in the season’s first 23 games to just 12 in the next 24. And 21-year-old forward Quinton Byfield has seen his own breakout season similarly stall, falling from 21 points in 23 games to 13 in 22.
PLD is MIA. One player who was supposed to be arguably the biggest difference-maker for the Kings was Pierre-Luc Dubois, the former No. 3 overall pick and three-time 25+ goal scorer (including with Winnipeg last season). To get Dubois and his $8.5 million cap hit, L.A. had to trade several useful pieces — headlined by 24-year-old center Gabriel Vilardi — to the Jets last summer. All the Kings have gotten out of Dubois so far is 10 goals and 20 points in 47 games, which has him tracking for one of the worst seasons of his career. PLD wasn’t even doing well before L.A.’s season took its turn, but he could have helped mitigate the damage if he played to his potential.
The shots aren’t finding the net. Through Dec. 7, L.A. had the second-highest share of shot attempts during its games of any team in the NHL; since then, they have fallen all the way down to… third-highest. Wait, what? Yes, the Kings’ possession-based playing style has actually not changed much at all during their cold stretch. The biggest difference is that, in addition to goaltending, their shooting percentage has fallen from fourth-best in the league to second-worst. Some of this is just the product of their tactical approach; few teams pump more long-range (i.e., low-percentage) attempts at the net than L.A. does. But among the Kings’ top players, only Adrian Kempe (who went from 10.4% to 13.0%) has seen any kind of improvement in shooting percentage since L.A.’s performance peaked.
If this post seems extremely negative about the Kings, there is good news in Tinseltown. Despite going 2-14 over the past 16 games, Los Angeles still has a 77% chance to make the playoffs in my meta-forecast (and a 3% chance to win the Cup). So this team has a great chance to regroup and re-peak after its recent cold streak — and I think it also has the talent to pull that off.