After last night\u2019s game, I asked Drew Doughty if he felt like the Kings were playing 0-3 hockey, as they sit with three losses through three games.<\/p>\n
He felt that the Colorado game was certainly 0-3 hockey but pushed back with the San Jose and Florida games. The San Jose game was one that I think most people who watched felt the Kings should have won. The Florida game felt in some ways like the games we watched last season, even though the reasons behind it were different and the fans in attendance only got the scheduled 60 minutes on their ticket, a rarity at Crypto.com Arena last time around. There\u2019s probably a world where it\u2019s 1-1-1. In this world, though, whether you\u2019re playing 0-3 hockey or not, you\u2019ve lost three in a row.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s not like there\u2019s any reprieve to come. The Kings head to Vegas next to take on the defending Western Conference Champions. They then return home to host the 2024 and 2025 Western Conference Champion Edmonton Oilers. Not a great pair of games to need a win. <\/p>\n
But that\u2019s where they\u2019re at. <\/p>\n
The real quote from Doughty that I felt was important, though, came later in the scrum, because it addressed where he feels the Kings need to go moving forward. <\/p>\n
Doughty was asked if there was a part \u2013 or multiple parts \u2013 of the system that he felt specifically needed to be improved. Here was his answer \u2013<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think we need to adjust anything on systems. I just think we need to do them better and when we do get our chances, we\u2019ve got to capitalize.\u201d<\/p>\n
I actually agree with him and here\u2019s my interpretation. <\/p>\n
The Kings shouldn\u2019t overreact to three games, but they also can\u2019t accept that one game you could\u2019ve or should\u2019ve won is good enough. It isn\u2019t. It\u2019s the balance between urgency and panic. There needs to be urgency. There shouldn\u2019t be panic. <\/p>\n
The points in October count the same as the points in April and the Kings have just the one, from three games played. In my opinion, the issues have been almost exclusively execution, the Colorado game aside. While last night\u2019s game felt more like last season, it wasn\u2019t because of the way the Kings tried to approach the game. They just didn\u2019t execute against a Florida team that limits space on the ice. I felt the Kings struggled to adjust against that type of team. <\/p>\n
I think that my biggest hope going forward is that the Kings continue to move forward with the systems and style they\u2019re trying to implement. There have been some growing pains and not everything has been a \u201chit the ground skating\u201d situation. But there shouldn\u2019t be stylistic or wholesale changes based on the first three games. The only way through is forward and that\u2019s the way the Kings need to continue to move.<\/p>\n
With that being said, execution was a problem and that, in my opinion, is what needs to be different. <\/p>\n
Peter Laviolette said last night that the Kings turned the puck over too much in their own zone and turned the puck over too much in the neutral zone. By my count, that\u2019s two of the three zones on the ice and the biggest reason that there weren\u2019t too many turnovers in the offensive zone is that, because of the first two, they weren\u2019t there often enough.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t put all that much stock into the giveaway\/takeaway statistics on NHL, because they are arbitrary by building. <\/p>\n
However. <\/p>\n
The Kings had 27 turnovers last night per NHL.com, which is tied for the highest total in any one game this season around the league. I think the eye test supports that. Laviolette said the Kings were \u201coff a beat\u201d offensively last night. I think that applies throughout the ice whenever they had the puck. Defensively, they were sound, with good goaltending and a good showing from the penalty kill. Just felt like they couldn\u2019t string two passes together cohesively and on the occasions they were able to, as just seven high-danger chances shows you, they were not able to get to the net at all. It was not a strategic approach to try and play a 2-1 game. It was a lack of execution that limited the chances the Kings had. <\/p>\n
For the lapses that existed in Games 1 and 2, the puck movement was largely pretty clean in Colorado and San Jose. I thought it was pretty exciting. The Kings don\u2019t want to play the way they did last night, so even if you were inclined to support the defensive improvements, what happened was what we saw in Colorado but the other way. The Kings defended well but didn\u2019t execute with the puck. That\u2019ll be addressed. <\/p>\n
Last night, the Kings had a season-low in shot attempts, despite a season-high in power-play time. And it wasn\u2019t even close. 47 shot attempts were 15 fewer than the Kings had in Colorado and if you place that game into last night\u2019s schedule, only six times during the 2025-26 season did the Kings have fewer. Only four times last season did they have fewer high-danger chances. <\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a question for the class. <\/p>\n
At what strength did the Kings record the most high-danger chances \u2013 5-on-5, power play or shorthanded?<\/p>\n
The fact that you probably had to think about it tells the story. Per Natural Stat Trick, the Kings had seven total high-danger chances. Four came 5-on-5. Two came shorthanded. One came on the power play. Now, I question why Erik Haula\u2019s shorthanded breakaway did not count as a high-danger chance, while Joel Armia and Brian Dumoulin\u2019s did. Haula actually got directly to the net twice shorthanded and neither was recorded as a \u201chigh-danger chance\u201d. But that probably proves the point even more, doesn\u2019t it? In offensive situations, the Kings just were not clean with the puck, especially when up a man, and that was reflected in the game. <\/p>\n
A lot of the problems came further down the ice, too. When you breakdown along the way, as the Kings did many times, it\u2019s hard to establish time in the offensive zone and it\u2019s hard to establish possession. Even on the power play, sometimes against just three defenders, the Kings struggled to gain the offensive zone with possession. In watching back the 5-on-3, the Kings only gained the offensive zone cleanly once on zone entries, despite a two-man advantage. One one occasion too, they circled back after being denied before getting it in. No matter how good the stand was, when you\u2019re up 5-on-3, the skating and puck movement from your best guys should be more than enough to be close to 100 percent on entries. That it wasn\u2019t, I felt, was indicative of a night that was off a beat, so to speak. <\/p>\n
So the Kings press on. A veteran team won\u2019t panic, nor will a veteran coach. But the Kings will have two, if not three, practices before the Vegas game. They\u2019ll look to get back on beat, with another unrelenting test awaiting them on Saturday evening. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After last night\u2019s game, I asked Drew Doughty if he felt like the Kings were playing 0-3 hockey,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":874400,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-874399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=874399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/874400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=874399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=874399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=874399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}