Los Angeles Kings: Evaluating the Kings after 12 games

The Los Angeles Kings are 12 games into the 2019 season and have given us plenty to evaluate thus far.

After a couple of weeks of play, the Los Angeles Kings stand at a 4-8 record. They are last in the Western Conference along with the Wild, as both have only 8 points. Their bad start can be contributed to a couple of things: Not enough offense, bad defense and horrible goaltending.

The Kings have scored an okay amount of goals with 31. However, the bad thing is that their leading scorer in goals is Anze Kopitar and he has only four goals. The team as a whole is contributing with multiple players at three and two goals.

Although, that is not enough as they need to find in their roster someone who can have a knack for scoring consistently throughout each game. Without this, it will be tough for the Kings to win enough games to make the playoffs.

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Their defense has been terrible as well as the Kings have only three players that have a positive +/- rating—Dustin Brown, Kyle Clifford and defenseman Sean Walker.

All their other players have a negative rating with Ilya Kovalchuck at a -10 and team leaders Drew Doughty and Jeff Carter at a -8 rating, which is the worst. As a team, they have a -18 rating, which is tied for the league-worst.

This can not happen as the Kings need their team leaders to step up and play solid defense as well as their back end.

Otherwise, their rating will continue to get worse and the team will suffer as a consequence.

Lastly, the easiest thing to point to for the Kings’ bad start is their horrible goaltending. Right now, the Kings have two goaltenders who both have below .890 save %.

Backup Jack Campbell has a .880% and starter Jonathan Quick has a .849%. For an NHL goaltender, that is terrible, as the average save percentage is at a minimum .900% save percentage.

Some of this can be contributed to bad defense, but some can also be attributed to their ultra aggressiveness outside their net. There are times both goaltenders, especially Quick, comes out of their crease looking to bait the shooter to shoot early.

However, if the shooter is smart and waits at the right time, he can get an easier shot or pass it off to his streaking teammate to score. When goalies are aggressive, they need to have fast movement in case the player beats them on a move.

Otherwise, they will be easily scored upon putting their team behind in the game.

Luckily, it is still early in the season and the Los Angeles Kings will almost certainly get better on offense, defense, and goaltending. However, with some teams off to hot starts and with them being in the ultra competitive Pacific Division, they need to pick up the pace real quick to stay afloat.