March has been a terrific month for the Los Angeles Kings, who have gone 9-4-1 through 14 games. The Kings have been playing their best hockey of the season, with their offense starting to blossom along with the continued dominance of not only their defensive play but also that of goaltender Darcy Kuemper.
Everything seems to be clicking right now, but the problem is — and has been for the entirety of this season — that it’s only clicking at home. The Kings love playing at Crypto.com Arena, and they are the best team in the NHL on home ice with a 26-3-4 record. That’s right, playoffs are just around the corner, and the Kings only have three regulation losses in their home building. Insanity. Their dominance at home has only improved as of late, as they are currently riding a seven-game winning streak and 15-game point streak.
“We love playing at home,” Warren Foegele said. ” For some reason, it seems like we are able to have more complete efforts there, but we like playing in front of our fans, they give us energy and we feel comfortable playing at home.”
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Unfortunately for the Kings, they can’t play every game at home. As we inch closer to the postseason, it’s their road record that’s cause for concern, as an almost inevitable rematch with the Edmonton Oilers in round one of the Stanley Cup Playoffs lies ahead. The Kings have an abysmal 14-19-5 record on the road this season and are the only playoff team in the Western Conference to have a losing record on the road. Forget about just having a losing record, the Kings’ road record is in the same vicinity as the Anaheim Ducks and Seattle Kraken. It’s not even that they started off the season very poorly on the road and have gradually been getting better. All four of their losses in March came on the road, one of which included a 5-1 loss to the Chicago Blackhawks.
While it’s looking like the Kings will be met with the tortures of Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl for the fourth year in a row, the Kings have the opportunity to gain an advantage they haven’t had the luxury of for the past three seasons. With 11 games remaining, home-ice advantage in round one of the playoffs is still up for grabs, and the Kings are in a prime position to secure it.
The Kings currently have a slight hold on second place in the Pacific Division, leading the Oilers by just two points with a game in hand. And after what we witnessed on Thursday night in Denver, it’s crucial the Kings do everything in their power to play the first two games of the first round at Crypto.com Arena, whether it be against the Oilers or not.
Road Woes Continue in Denver
Last night’s game against the Colorado Avalanche was maybe one you could have chalked up as a so-called “scheduled loss.” The Kings were without two depth forwards, both of whom are the heart and soul of a rejuvenated fourth line that has been tremendous on both sides of the puck since their formation: Tanner Jeannot and Alex Turcotte, who didn’t travel with the team to Denver. While those are two energy guys who have formed a some real chemistry with Samuel Helenius and have given the Kings the ability to confidently roll all four lines, their absence wasn’t a valid enough reason as to why the Kings weren’t able to put a puck in the net and only muster 22 shots on goal.
It should be common knowledge now just how good Kuemper has been for this Kings team in his bounce-back season, but for some reason, against a scorching-hot Avalanche team, on the road, backup goaltender David Rittich was given the nod. Now, by no means was last night’s loss due to the play of Rittich, but with what we have seen from Kuemper this season, there’s a pretty decent chance he could have stolen a couple of those.
The Kings play better in front of Kuemper and are more confident in front of him, so what’s the justification for having him ride the pine in a playoff-type game on the road, where this team struggles consistently? Maybe if Rittich had some insane record against the Avalanche, it would have made some sense, but he doesn’t. He’s 5-6-0 with a .891 save percentage against the Avalanche all-time.
Being on the road, while missing both Jeannot and Turcotte and without Kuemper starting, it just did not feel like the Kings were in the best position to walk away with two points. Regardless of all of that, it was their performance on the ice that didn’t look like the team we saw over the past few games. It’s like a completely different team out on the ice when the Kings are on the road. They went from scoring 17 goals and only giving up five in three games to being shut out 4-0. Nothing was threatening about the Kings’ offensive game, transition through the neutral zone, or creativity off the rush and down low that was there against the Carolina Hurricanes, Boston Bruins, or New York Rangers.
“We didn’t have our best stuff, there’s no question,” head coach Jim Hiller said postgame. “We didn’t connect on much, I just didn’t think we were very good.”
Their power play has been atrocious in general this season, but it’s their power play on the road that has truly been terrible, operating at just 12.4 percent. The Kings have drawn the second-fewest penalties this season, which doesn’t help their case, but they did have three opportunities to bury one against the Avalanche. In typical Kings fashion, they wasted those opportunities and only managed to generate a single shot. Just when we thought the power play was seeing some real progress too, with the Kings scoring two goals on the man advantage against the Rangers on Tuesday night, the first time since the third game of the season they scored more than one power-play goal in a game.
If you had to draw one similarity between the Oilers and Avalanche, it would be the amount of star talent they possess and their ability to take games over. The Avalanche’s star power exposed the Kings multiple times, especially on the power play. Whether it was Cale Makar, Nathan Mackinnon, or Martin Necas, at least one of them had some involvement in all four Avalanche goals. The Colorado power play picked apart a Kings penalty kill that is ranked top eight in the NHL.
The Kings couldn’t score, they didn’t capitalize on the chances they were given, they didn’t play that same assertive, play-driving style they played at home for the past two weeks, and they surely couldn’t contain the Avalanche’s star talent. It was a similar story in the last road game the Kings played against the Minnesota Wild. They couldn’t generate a ton, losing 3-1; they went one for four on the power play, and both goals the Wild scored were on the man advantage (the third goal was an empty netter). It’s like everything that makes them so good and so hard to play against at home goes out the window when they are on the road.
“We have to figure out our road game before we go into playoffs,” Quinton Byfield said.
It’s funny, though, because the Kings have played all these high-end teams before, and it’s crazy how different the outcomes are when they are playing them at home versus on the road. The Kings are one of the best defensive teams in the league; they have the capability of shutting down top talent, and they have proven it numerous times this season. Here are a few stats that will blow your mind. The Kings are 15-0-1 against playoff teams at home this season and are 3-12-1 against playoff teams on the road.
That right there shows you just how different and how worse of a team the Kings are when they have to play on the road. It’s not the caliber of opponents that matters, but whether the game is being played in downtown Los Angeles or someplace else. Now the playoffs are on a whole different wavelength, and trends that are common in the regular season usually don’t hold the same amount of weight. What makes the Kings’ situation much harder to look past is how extreme both sides of the spectrum are. They are super, super dominant at home and super, super awful on the road, and that has been a consistent theme over the course of the entire season. It’s hard to believe none of it is going to translate over into the playoffs.
They have proved it game in and game out that picking up wins against playoff teams on the road is just something they have a hard time with. Even their red-hot March, where we have seen some of the best hockey this group has played, still didn’t spark any change on the road against the Avalanche.
This is the strongest lineup the Kings have had in four seasons, and they have the best chance at finally making some progress in the postseason, but if their regular-season performances on the road are any indication as to what we should expect come playoffs, securing home-ice advantage is a must.
