We have access to some wonderful resources these days. One is scoring chance data. At this point and time, thanks to numerous different sites and trackers, we can look at who generates the most individual scoring chances, what teams generate and prevent the most scoring chances, and also who generates the most high danger scoring chances.
These are interesting numbers to consider in a large and small scale. In the small scale, on a game to game basis, it can tell you if a team is being opportunistic or not. They may not have possession, or a lot of shots, but the chances they do get seem to come from a worthwhile area. First, let’s show you exactly what a “Scoring Chance” actually is considered, and also what a “High-Danger Chance” is.
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Breaking the ice up into sections, you can see that blue represents the high danger area, red the medium danger, and yellow the low danger. This is also used to crated adjusted save percentages, which weights saves based on where they come from. Most people log scoring chances using the “Between the circles, below the dots” idea, which is about right for the medium danger red zone, except you are subtracting the center point, and making it more of a home plate shape down low. High danger is simply the slot and low slot. Why not the high slot you ask? It is probably because if you are in the high slot, teams have collapsed down low, and there is tons of traffic in front. It is also not the best angle of shooting from a shooters perspective, as you have almost no angle on the goalie.
Now we know what we are looking at. Well, maybe you haven’t noticed, maybe you have, but the Kings generate a lot of scoring chances. Currently (As of February 24), the team sits at No.3 overall in the league in scoring chances four at 29.1 per 60 minutes of even strength play. They share a spot in the standings with some really offensively gifted teams like Dallas, Pittsburgh, Tampa Bay, the Islanders, and the Capitals. Really, the only two teams that look out of place amongst the top are the Kings and the Toronto Maple Leafs. In terms of high danger chances, the Kings are AGAIN near the top of the league. Instead of third, they take a slight bump down to sixth overall in the league with an 11.7 High danger chance generation rate per 60 minutes of even strength play. Again, teams near the top include Dallas, San Jose, Pittsburgh, Toronto, Tampa Bay.
Wow, with all those scoring chances and high danger chances, the Kings probably score a lot of goals right? Wrong. The Kings (And Toronto for that matter), are amongst the worst in the league in goal generation for at even strength. They score the third fewest goals in the league at a 1.9 goals for per 60. Toronto, a team similar to Los Angeles’s befuddling conversion rate, is fifth worst, also with a 1.9. When compared apples to apples alongside other teams ripe in scoring chances, it can be absolutely baffling.
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It makes entirely too much sense to think that the team with the highest amount of scoring chances on average scores the highest amount of goals right? Even if you are shooting horribly, getting to the right areas constantly and throwing enough spaghetti at the wall has to result in scoring right? Well, leave it to the Kings to test the boundaries of offensively frustrating.
Here is that same chart with shooting percentages added to the last column.
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It is never for a lack of trying. That might as well be etched onto the inevitable Dustin Brown statue that is going to go outside of Staples Center in the future, “There never was a lack of trying”
Some teams make a living on this on the flip side as well. Whereas the Kings constantly get to high scoring areas and generate scoring chances only to have them fall flat, there are teams out there that do very little in getting to these areas but score plenty.
The New York Rangers and Arizona are prime examples. These three teams have the 2nd and 5th highest team even strength shooting percentages, the 4th and 11th highest goals per 60, but the 26th and 24th highest scoring chance generation per 60. Whereas the Kings and Maples Leafs have numbers driven down by poor shooting percentage, the Rangers and Yotes have their numbers driven up. This is where you can start picking at outliers. Most of your teams in the bottom half of the league in scoring chance generation are NOT playoff teams. If you take the bottom 10 teams in the league (NJ, FLA, COL, VAN, NYR, MIN, ARI, OTT, BUF, NSH), only two of those teams are legit playoff teams at this point (Depending on how you feel about one of Nashville, Colorado, or New Jersey). Florida is an exception, as are the Predators to a degree, because of their defensive game. The Kings are also amongst the top teams in suppressing scoring chances, which has ultimately help make up for woeful shooting percentages. Toronto has no such luxury, and end up giving up about as much as they dish out. They are to an extent, the L.A. Kings without defense.
These are simply rate statistics though. What they do not actually take into account is the conversion rate of high danger chances. The Kings generate 11.7 high danger chances, but do they actually covert on any of them? To look into that you’d need to go back game by game using hockeystats.ca or War-on-Ice’s game reports and look at each logged shot attempt in the high scoring area.
Going game by game and looking at high-danger chances (and logging how many the Kings convert on), you realize that the Kings do in fact get about 9-10 high danger chances per game. They usually score at least one of those chances. Looking at a season average percentage, the Kings shoot just about 10.52% on high danger scoring chances on this season. Also, if you go month by month there is little variance in A) How many high danger chances they generate and B) how often they convert.
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Notice the dip in January of both average high danger chances AND shooting percentage on those chances? That may be an overly simplistic way of explaining a 6-5-1 record on the month.
Back to a more macro view of things though, the Kings scored a total of 59 goals from high danger areas of the ice at even strength. Consider that number, then consider that the Kings have scored a total of 163 goals over the entire season at all situations, and a total of 96 at even strength. That is just over 60% of their even strength goals. As stated earlier the Kings generate a high number of high scoring chances. L.A. has generated 1441 total scoring chances, with about 40% of those being hi danger (My numbers varied ever so slightly from War on Ice.)
These are a lot of numbers to throw up without context to a team that actually scores a lot of goals form high danger areas. War on ice does not actually show us conversion rates of high danger chances, so I took a two month sample from a team with a similar high danger rate, the Tampa Bay Lightning. The Lightning score slightly more goals per game than LA, (2.73 to 2.63), but score 111 even strength goals to L.As 96. So let’s see what the conversion rate is.
The last two months (26 games) have seen Tampa Bay score on at least one high danger chance a game except for two games. They have scored 36 goals in high danger areas and have done so on 212 attempts. That is a healthy shooting percentage of 17% in the high scoring areas for the Lightning. Let’s check on Philadelphia, a team that has equal high scoring chance and also equal 5v5 scoring rates. The Flyers in the last month of the season scored 18 times on 106 high scoring chances or….17%! However, the Flyers are interesting because they are very feast or famine. Nine times in the last 16 games they were held under season average of high scoring chances, and also six times they did not score a goal from those positions. This may be explained using our old friend “The eye test”, to see if the Flyers are maybe putting forth inconsistent efforts. Unfortunately there aren’t enough hours in the day for one person to eye test every team, ergo I’ll leave you to have conclusions on that if you religiously watch the Flyers.
The point in all this is simply that the Kings do not lack for trying. They get to the high scoring areas, they get the shots away, they get the scoring chances, but for whatever reason they just simply cannot score on them. This is when you get into personnel and personal skills sets of those players. Who is getting the most individual high danger chances for the Kings? Naturally It is Toffoli, Kopitar, Gaborik, Lewis, and Carter. These are players with personal shooting percentages of 8.3, 8.52, and OUCH, 5.44, 5.11 and 5.03., respectively. How does that compare to Tampa?
Their five highest individual scoring chance generating forwards are Callahan (8.06), Killorn (8.52), J.T. Brown (7.76), Stamkos (9.31), and Tyler Johnson (8.10).
That is a lot lot lot different than the Kings highest danger player’s shooting percentages.
Thus we come to the ultimate and rather obvious conclusion: The Kings just do not have a lot of high converting dangerous players, at least this season they do not. They may have the players who get to the spaces and create the opportunities, but many of them are not capable of converting on those chances. There may be no other explanation to this other than player quality in terms of offensive capability. While you could factor in things like opponents, linemates, systems, at the end of the day the Kings do not convert that frequently on high dangers chances.
This may be something I look into much deeper in the future, going team by team and into past seasons to try and find out if it is repeatable year to year, team to team. That is, however, a healthy summer project that would be undertaken. For now though, we have a brief look into some of the data that may be keeping the Kings down in terms of scoring. They rack up the scoring chances and high danger chances, but do not convert.
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