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News Article: What went wrong: 2020-21 Los Angeles Kings

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Doughty's even strength GAR isn't because he didn't play well offensively at even strength. It's because our offense had one of the worst even strength goal rates in the league. He was back to his old self this year facilitating breakouts and outlet passes, but there's a reason why we're supposedly trying to find two top 6 forwards.

I also thought he brought back an element of breaking the puck into the offensive zone himself this year. If he had better forwards to work off of, it'll lead to more even strength offense.
 
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Could have commented on that ole 1-3-1 trap hockey and paint drying power play we have.
 
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Mattias said:
Could have commented on that ole 1-3-1 trap hockey and paint drying power play we have.
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I know it's a little OT but that had better change this year otherwise there's a serious conflict between the drafting/roster construction and the system.

You don't go out of your way to draft speed and skill at the expense of size/grit to play a passive 1-3-1. That's the kind of dissonance that leads so many of us to think there's a gap in the vision.
 
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Legionnaire said:
This roster, at its young stage, should be looking to what went right far more than what went wrong.
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Not a ton went right though, even with limited expectation.

-They didn't have any of the young players establish themselves offensively, like similar aged players have on other teams.
-They didn't establish any kind of identity, whether that is going to be offensive, defensive, physical, tough to play against etc. As was discussed here, they were near the bottom of the league in both goals and hits.
-The PP regressed horribly as the season went along.

Nobody expected them to be good, myself and many others were looking for a year similar to 08-09 and I don't think they reached that goal.
 
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Just reading the title, the player that popped in my head was Vilardi. Too much, too soon, hit a wall already. Questions for me going into next year, how do we address the 2C position to ease him in better.
 
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Herby said:
Not a ton went right though, even with limited expectation.

-They didn't have any of the young players establish themselves offensively, like similar aged players have on other teams.
-They didn't establish any kind of identity, whether that is going to be offensive, defensive, physical, tough to play against etc. As was discussed here, they were near the bottom of the league in both goals and hits.
-The PP regressed horribly as the season went along.

Nobody expected them to be good, myself and many others were looking for a year similar to 08-09 and I don't think they reached that goal.
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It went better than I expected. I mean nobody thought we'd be fighting for the final playoff spot so close to the end of the season.We blew at least 5 [if not more] games were we had a 2 goal lead in the 3rd. Had they even shown up to a few of those games vs the Sharks and Ducks, they may have made the playoffs. We made Martin Jones look like a HOF'er in 6 of the 8 games. The pp carried the team and the offense for the first half of the year. They were cracking at over 25 pct for a while. Once it stopped, the offense stopped and the losses just kept coming.
 
johnjm22 said:
What went wrong is they got worse as the season went along, not better.

It's the opposite of what you want to see when you're a rebuilding team.
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I don't know how much worse they were at the end, they just had all those Colorado games bunched up. Take out those games vs. the Avalanche and they were 5-4-1 in their last 10.

It's definitely not what you want to see, but rebuilding teams are often full of younger players who aren't used to the grind. I think falling off at the end was fully expected.
 
Fishhead said:
I don't know how much worse they were at the end, they just had all those Colorado games bunched up. Take out those games vs. the Avalanche and they were 5-4-1 in their last 10.
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They started the season 9-6-3 and were in a great spot to grab the last playoff spot in the division.

From that point on they went: 12-22-4

That's a .368 P%

For reference, here's the P% of the worst teams in the league:
29th NJ .402
30th ANA .384
31st BUF .330

For the last 3 months of the season, you could argue the Kings were the worst team in the NHL outside of Buffalo.

And there's actually people around here that want to start trading assets to improve this team now. What a joke.
 
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Herby said:
Not a ton went right though, even with limited expectation.

-They didn't have any of the young players establish themselves offensively, like similar aged players have on other teams.
-They didn't establish any kind of identity, whether that is going to be offensive, defensive, physical, tough to play against etc. As was discussed here, they were near the bottom of the league in both goals and hits.
-The PP regressed horribly as the season went along.

Nobody expected them to be good, myself and many others were looking for a year similar to 08-09 and I don't think they reached that goal.
Click to expand...
Next season is a big one for the Kings organization. We will start to learn what kind of players and leaders will emerge from our recent draft classes.

The Kings need at least two or three of these guys who are over 20 years of age to break through onto the NHL roster next season.
 
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Mats26 said:
Just reading the title, the player that popped in my head was Vilardi. Too much, too soon, hit a wall already. Questions for me going into next year, how do we address the 2C position to ease him in better.
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He should be more ready for the role. But he's still not had a full season in the NHL or OHL since 15-16.
Given where Vilardi was a few seasons ago, I think his development has been very good.
I'm still 50/50 on whether he should be a winger or center. That skating can be rough. But it was obviously worse during his rough patch last season. he also needs to get closer to 50 percent on faceoffs this year.

But whether he's a C or W, I think Vilardi is top 6 material. Maybe top 9 on a very good team.

But the team started with Lizotte as the 2C and pretends Mikey Anderson, Matt Roy and Sean Walker are top 4 defensemen.
That's where it went wrong.

The team was able to tred water and stay reasonably close for awhile because their division sucked.
When Carter got traded, the Kings ability to tred water and stay close just went down the drain.

The first line just doesn't score like a first line at even strength.
Dustin Brown is not a top 6 forward. Still nice on the PP.
Iafallo is more a 3rd liner than a first liner.


Here are your even-strength point/60 leaders last year.

Athanasiou 2.21
Carter 1.8
Vilardi 1.73
Kopitar 1.71
Iafallo 1.6
Brown 1.59
JAD 1.55
Moore 1.49
Andersson 1.44
Lemieux 1.36
Lizotte 1.2
Kempe 1.2
Wagner 1.06
Grundstrom 1.01

Kempe's even-strength production is pretty alarming.
Kopitar was over 2 points/60 for six out of eight years in his heyday. He's missed that 4 of the last 5 years.
He's feasting off powerplay time these days.

I get it if the Kings don't want to trade Kopitar. But he's never going to win here again.
He might be a good mentor for Byfield and Vilardi and Turcotte. But he's never going to play for a Kings contender again.
 
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It was a bunch of things that were combined but they weren't as bad as the could have been with Colorado and Vegas in the division.

1) They had guys in the top9 that are gonna be battling for the 13th and 14th spots on the team this year.

2) A horrible 1-3-1 system that didn't help develop any offense.

3) Giving the youth opportunities the test their NHL skills instead putting the best guys out every game. (Not many times)

4) playing MacDermid more than one game on defense.

5) a short season with very limited practice time. IMO this is probably the biggest issue. Maybe more days off during the season and having more learning time might have helped the younger guys. Vilardi probably doesn't hit the wall that hard last season.

And even with all these bad things. The Kings still were better the year before points wise and they'll be better this season too. If they don't make the playoffs this season will be a step in the wrong direction and the first strike on management (IMHO).
 
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