Alexander: Kings keep rolling, and stinginess is a reason
LOS ANGELES — Has the greater NHL community been overlooking the Kings?
Maybe. Maybe not. But we can say this with certainty: A team that is historically poor in day games was more than good enough Saturday afternoon in beating Winnipeg, 4-1. One game by itself doesn’t say much, but maybe it’s a sign something special is happening here, something lots of people are missing.
The Kings tied a franchise record for consecutive games with points, 11. They’ve done that four times in the franchise’s 56-year history, and the last time was early in the 2013-14 season, en route to a second Stanley Cup in four years. It is a feat, though coach Todd McLellan and defenseman Drew Doughty both shrugged it off.
What does matter to them? In the most recent 10 games of that streak they’ve given up less than two goals a game, 1.9 to be precise, and gave up more than two only once.
“That is something we can hang our hats on,” McLellan said. “I don’t go in and trumpet it in the locker room, but (we) take a lot of pride in that.
“We feel like we’ve got to protect the goaltenders and help them out, (both) the D and the forwards, and a lot goes into that: Shot-blocking, faceoff coverages, breakouts, shift length, you can go on and on.”
This may not exactly be the “heavy” team to play against that characterized the Kings in the Darryl Sutter era, playing a style that became outmoded as the game’s tempo got faster. But stinginess and attention to defensive detail works in any era.
Saturday the only goal the Kings gave up came with 33 seconds left in a five-minute power play, after Blake Lizotte’s second-period match penalty for high-sticking Josh Morrissey in the head.
“A lot of the shots come from outside, and not too many Grade A’s from right in front of me,” said goalie Joonas Korpisalo, who faced 26 shots. “There’s going to be some (times) where you have to make those timely saves, but it’s fun to play (that way) … That’s how the structure works. I know that when the puck is next to the boards, I can stay a little deeper and kind of see what’s up, what’s the other option there. And that kind of calms my game a little bit, too.”
As the Kings continue to chase the Vegas Golden Knights for first place in the Pacific Division, there’s a sense that there are greater rewards in the distance. They have 10 games left, six of them on the road and five against teams currently out of the top eight in the Western Conference. Another nine points out of that batch would seem to secure a playoff spot, but that should be just the start for a team that has a blend of experience and young legs, gained some valuable postseason experience in last year’s seven-game first-round grind against Edmonton and seems to be growing in confidence.
“For the majority of these games that we’ve won, we’ve kind of outplayed the other team for almost 60 minutes,” said Drew Doughty, who scored his seventh goal of the season and fourth in his last five games at the very start of the third period, answering after Pierre-Luc Dubois’ aforementioned power play goal had cut the L.A. lead to 2-1.
Controlling the play for the majority of a game is “not the only way you can win in the playoffs, but that’s a big part of it,” Doughty said. “So I really like the way we’re playing right now, but we’ve got to keep it going as the playoffs approach.”
This is a multi-tiered roster. Doughty and captain Anze Kopitar are the holdovers from the Stanley Cup era. Players like Adrian Kempe, Alex Iafallo, Trevor Moore and Mikey Anderson are younger veterans. Philip Danault and Viktor Arvidsson, as well as recent acquisitions Korpisalo and defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov, are imports who bring experience from other clubs. And people like Quinton Byfield and Rasmus Kupari, both former first-round picks, represent the future but are growing into the present.
How has this group progressed?
“I think it’s just confidence,” Doughty said. “They’re playing awesome. I mean, you see Q (Byfield) out there, how well he’s playing. I can’t stress enough how important he is to our team, (with) all the little things he does that people maybe don’t see (but) that we see. And then we’ve got other young guys like Kup (Kupari). I think he’s been playing awesome. He stepped up tonight in the third when (Lizotte) wasn’t able to play.
“And yeah, the young guys are just getting confidence. Gabe (Vilardi), what a year he’s had. Yeah, it’s all confidence … We all knew they could succeed. They just needed to get that confidence and get their chance, and they’ve run with it.”
That progress, McLellan said, was a reflection of what’s always been there but hasn’t necessarily always been evident.
“That type of player, the player that we’ve been playing with lately, was in us earlier in the year, but we just didn’t quite want to grasp it,” he said. We wanted to try it a different way. Sometimes it takes a while to figure it out, but right now we’ve figured it out to this point. And it’s going to get a lot tougher going forward.”
Part of the tough part for McLellan will be telling guys who are performing well that they’ll have to be a healthy scratch. When currently injured left wing Kevin Fiala and defenseman Sean Durzi are ready to return, there are going to be some hard decisions to be made.
“I wish we could play five lines and everybody gets in,” McLellan said. “But we’re looking young men in the eyes that their careers are on the line and they want to play every night. And sometimes we have to tell them ‘You’re coming out, but you’re playing really well.’
“That’s the most difficult thing to do. The (easy thing) me is, ‘Hey, you know what? Get your crap together because you’re not doing these things. Watch a game.’ It’s not fun. No one likes to do it, but it’s way easier because you have a case built in front of you. (Sunday, against St. Louis), if we make changes, it’s going to be hard to build the case. Sometimes it’s just, somebody else is getting a turn.”
Those decisions may be hard, but they represent a really good problem to have.
jalexander@scng.com