LA Kings: Reviewing the Kings season through analytics

The 2021 season for the LA Kings, much like for other teams around the league, had its ups and downs. Going into the season for LA, more growing pains were expected. At the start of the season, the Kings had the eighth youngest roster in the NHL. Rookies were playing important positions, the roster was constantly in flux, and a new system was still being implemented.

For Todd McLellan and the rest of the coaching staff, signs of growth started to materialize before the shutdown of the league last year. Ending on a seven-game win streak, progression was noticeable, and players were starting to adhere to the new system. Even though their record said otherwise, the Kings posted a surprisingly good team xGF% last year of 51.01 during 5v5 play, according to EvolvingHockey.com.

That would be good enough to be 12th in the NHL.

The relatively high standing for Los Angeles in xGF% last year even caught the attention of Patrick Bacon over at TopDown Hockey, “This was a surprise,” he stated, “but less so when you consider that Todd McLellan’s teams have generally done a strong job of driving play.”

Even with the surprising results from the prior year, Los Angeles was still poised for another low placement in the standings. With the inability of many returning players to play any meaningful hockey for over a year, and no real quality roster additions in the off-season (even with a large amount of cap space), expectations around the hockey community for the Kings were low. Sure enough, they lived up to those low expectations.

The Kings had a difficult time driving plays, and struggling to score during even-strength play didn’t just carry over from last season. It got worse.

Posting their lowest team expected goals percentage since EvolvingHockey.com started tracking the data in 2007 with 44.3, and fans hoping for progression found themselves watching a regressing hockey team.

When you face the Golden Knights, who finished number five in team xGF%, and the Avalanche, who were the best team in the NHL for 28% of the schedule, numbers may be skewed. And those top teams took the opportunity to beat up on the rebuilding Kings.

Lack of scoring

Tell me if you’ve heard this before? The LA Kings had trouble scoring goals this season.

Since the 2015-16 season, the Kings are 25th in GF/G with 2.60, and this season was almost identical to recent years, and this season, nothing changed.

Los Angeles finished 27th in the league at goals per game with 2.54. If not for the strong power play at the beginning of the season, which ended up accounting for 22% of their goal total, they would have found themselves closer to the bottom.

Here is Patrick Bacon’s take on the LA Kings’ season looking through an analytics lens

“Unfortunately for the Kings, things did not pan out. As of today, they rank 25th in 5-on-5 expected goals percentage with a mark of 46.09%. This data is missing two games, the first of which is currently in progress against Colorado and sees them being outshot 27-11 and outscored 6-0 through two periods, so I imagine these numbers will look even worse when it’s all said and done. They were a fairly balanced team, ranking 27th in 5v5 xGF/60 and 24th in 5v5 xGA/60, which means they don’t really have anything strong to build on; they’ve just got a lot of work to do on both sides of the puck.”

“A lot of work to do” is right, and it should start in the acquisitions department.

The back end

Last year, the Kings had six of seven defensemen who played 20+ games post a SAT% (shot attempts percentage) above 50%. This year only one posted above that total, Drew Doughty at 50.3%.

This isn’t to point out that the Kings’ defense is bad by any stretch. They’re just young. When Mikey Anderson and Tobias Bjornfot, two rookies who came into the season with a total of nine games played combined, are playing top-four minutes on the back end, struggles are bound to continue.

Talking about the rookies, I thought Mikey Anderson had a real solid rookie campaign. His TOI/G of 21:11 would be good enough to lead all rookies in the NHL and is the highest amount of playing time for a Kings’ rookie since Drew Doughty’s rookie season in 2008-09.

It wasn’t just good to see him hold his own throughout the season.

More importantly, his play seemed to revitalize Drew Doughty as well. Drew echoed that sentiment during his end-of-season presser, “I love playing with Mikey Anderson. We’ve developed quite a partnership. I don’t know if you necessarily need to bring anyone in on defense.”

Promising words from the two-time Stanley Cup winner on his rookie partner.

In order for the LA Kings to become a playoff team, they’ll need Drew Doughty, their anchor on defense, to elevate his to play to what it was during their cup years, and this year he did.

An elite player, like Doughty, who takes up 15% of the team’s cap, must produce. So I’m sure the improved play this year compared to recent years for the former Norris Trophy winner had to be a welcomed sight for Todd McLellan and the rest of Kings management.

Going into next season, barring any real player movement on the defensive side, the coaching staff will need more offense from their young defenseman, and it all starts with clean breakouts. Far too many times during the season, defensemen were left with no outlet in their zone.

To improve, they’ll need their forwards to come down closer to the red line and be that outlet. When playing a 1-3-1 neutral zone trap strategy, LA will be forcing more dump-ins, so that clean breakout will be a key piece to watch at the start of next year.

A lineup in constant change

Going into the 2021 season, secondary scoring was bound to be an issue. After the top line of Iafallo – Kopitar – Brown, where would production come from?

Head Coach Todd McLellan found himself in search of that depth scoring throughout the year and looking at the discrepancies in minutes for the lines used. It’s easy to see. The Kopitar line with Iafallo and Brown did their part, posting an xGF% of 56.5, good enough to be the 16th best line in the NHL. The rest of the forward group, however, couldn’t find their footing, and line juggling was constant.

The big question mark for next season will be the left-wing position on the first line. While Alex Iafallo took on that role throughout most of the year, it’s widely known that in order for the Kings to be successful, a more elite scoring winger in that spot would be needed.

This isn’t to knock on the quality of play from Iafallo, but that it would be more advantageous for him to be placed in a secondary scoring role. That potential was illustrated toward the end of the year when Iafallo was placed alongside Gabe Vilardi and Lias Andersson.

A very important summer

While playoffs were preached at the beginning of the season by some of the veterans, the real goal was for Kings management to fully evaluate some of LA’s fringe players. With the young talent currently playing in Ontario soon to crack the lineup, it’ll be interesting to see who gets brought back into the fold next year.

Players like Austin Wagner, Blake Lizotte, Matt Luff, Carl Grundstrom, and Andreas Athanasiou, who all played important minutes this season, could have a hard time cracking the lineup next year.

There is a lot of work to do for general manager Rob Blake and the company this off-season. With the expansion draft looming, a top ten pick in the entry draft coming up, and lots of cap space to work with, this will be a very important summer for the future of this franchise.

Jack Eichel, anyone?

The 2021 season was a disappointment, yes, but to say it has been a failure would be wrong. Young players were given a chance to develop, and others were evaluated. The high-end prospect pool is on the cusp of making an impact, and the LA Kings should be a better team going forward.

So pump the brakes on any fire Todd or GMRB talk.