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Return of the Los Angeles Kings' playoff chances?
Oh how the mighty have risen.
Just last week the Los Angeles Kings were dead. They had a 26.3 percent chance of making the playoffs. This was documented on a certain blog that writes a lot about hockey. And now, per Sports Club Stats, their possibility of making the postseason has soared. Los Angeles is at 45.5 percent heading into Saturday night’s action against the Washington Capitals.
Welcome to this week’s edition of ‘Are the Kings Doomed?’
The answer is no … and if Los Angeles can beat the Caps, that would be four wins in a row for the defending Stanley Cup champions. Currently they’re three points back of Calgary (with one game in hand) for the final playoff spot in the Western Conference – but also one point behind Minnesota – another hot team chasing the postseason.
Are the Kings about to go on one of their miracle pushes into the playoffs? Or is this just another ruse to get us to believe Los Angeles has finally turned the corner.
The answer is again quite tricky. From The Los Angeles Times:
What has taken the Kings off their game?
Start with the likelihood of fatigue. They've played 64 playoff games the last three seasons, the most by any NHL team in a three-season span. Dallas played 63 playoff games from 1997-98 through 1999-2000, as did Detroit from 2006-07 through 2008-09.
"It's a lot of games," said Luc Robitaille, the Kings' president of business operations and a Cup champion with Detroit in 2002. "And you look at last year, we had a lot of guys that played in the Olympics. It takes a toll on a player over time."
Robitaille is right. While most of the Kings’ top talent is age 30 and under, that’s a ton of games. Even if you didn’t count the Olympics, that would have been extreme. The mighty Chicago Blackhawks struggled once with their current core – losing in the first round of the playoffs to Arizona/Phoenix in 2012.
Anze Kopitar seems to be Los Angeles’ poster boy for talented exhaustion. He’s on pace to score under 20 goals for the first time in 82 games in his career. He has been good, but simply not as great as usual.
But while Kopitar has lagged, others have stepped up, mainly the revival of the Dwight King, Jeff Carter, Tyler Toffoli line, who are all healthy and have contributed per LA Kings Insider:
Whether they’ve been scoring or not, there has been a clear improvement possession-wise, with King and Carter showing a noticeable spike in the metrics. Games aren’t decided based on shot attempts, though the numbers back up the palpable chemistry evident from the eye test.
The Insider shows that the trio’s puck possession number have jumped since the team scattered for the break and that the group’s overall numbers have been tops in the NHL since the All-Star break, citing TSN Analytics.
That being said, there are still elements weighing this group down. The Slava Voynov domestic violence suspension uncertainty adds to this. Also, Mike Richards of the $5.75 million salary cap hit is toiling in the minors.
Los Angeles has some room for general manager Dean Lombardi to make one of his famous trade deadline deals, but not much -- especially if Voynov, whose $4.16 million salary cap, hit returns if his suspension is lifted.
There may be more to this than personnel and salary cap considerations at the moment.
The Kings have a 7-12-6 road record, a startling number for a team that was over .500 on the road a year ago at 23-14-4. New players don't just make a bad road team a good road team.
And eight of the Kings’ last 11 games are on the road.
Then again if Los Angeles can win a Stanley Cup as an eighth seed (2012) or come from a 3-0 deficit to win a series (2014) en route to another championship, anything is possible. In that case, a less than 50 percent chance of making the playoffs from a website is laughable for this group.
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Josh Cooper is an editor for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @joshuacooper
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