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Shot Mentality: Are the Kings Taking Bad Shots? |
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As many years as I've watched the Kings, in the last five to six years there has been a dominating trend of their offense. Well, two actually if you count grind it out hockey. The one I am talking about is the beloved "Shot mentality." Everything on net. Get pucks on net. Get traffic in front, get pucks on the net, fight it out. As Gretzky once said, you miss 100-percent of the shots you don't take. Bad shots? No such thing!
Now first off, let me get this out of the way, I was pleased entirely with the effort last night at this isn't a rant blog about how the Kings' are terrible or that they need to change something. There are definitely going to be nights like last night where you outplay someone and lose. I am simply pointing out a trend I have seen about the mentality of the Kings offense as a whole for several seasons now that actually lends to the idea of them outplaying but not outscoring their opponents.
Last night was frustrating. It was frustrating for the Kings also I'm sure. Cory Schneider came up with 35 saves in a strong effort. However, the Kings also missed the net entirely 21 times. They also had 20 attempts blocked by opponents. That's 41 shots in total that Cory Schneider never touched. For some of the forwards it was tough out there. Dustin Brown had five on net (from lord knows where though), two blocked, three missed. Williams had five on net, two blocked, two missed. Give a break to defenseman, they have more legs to shoot through and a longer ways to go with point shots and such but we will mention some anyways. Drew Doughty had two on net, two blocked, and three missed. Willie Mitchell, none on net, four blocked, none missed. Eh it's one game. Maybe last night was just an isolated thing though.
Not so much.
The Kings, over the entirety of the season, lead the league in missed shots in total and on average. With 336 total missed shots, that rounds out into an average of around 15 missed shots a night. In 2012-13, they led the league as well with an average of 13.6 missed shots a night. They again led the league in missed shots in 2011-12. Last night was not something new with the Kings. If there was an award for most missed shots in a season or worst shooting percentage as a team, it would undoubtedly be called the L.A. Kings award. Mind you, none of this is taking into account that the Kings are notorious for getting shots blocked as well. We tend to believe that a select few, like Brown or Williams are guilty of maybe taking a poor shot here or there but it's pretty standard across the board, and looks like a team mentality. Over the last 10 games, if you look at Kopitar and you look at Brown, each get about 60% of their attempts at goal on net. Kopitar attempted 37 shots with 23 finding the goalie, while Brown attempted a total of 53 with 33 hitting the target. Almost identical percentages. So it's not just one player.
Overall, none of this seems like a bad thing right? You take a ton of shots and not surprisingly a lot get blocked and a lot miss the net. No problem. Then when you start looking at how low scoring an offense the Kings team as a whole has been over the last several seasons you start to scratch your head. This is a team that has been in the bottom five of goals for per game three of the last five years while still maintaining an average standing in shots generated per game (normally between 10th-20th.) Then you factor in league leaders in misses and this is about the time when my head starts to ache.
Now none of this is a problem when the team is winning or scoring, and on nights where they face a team with less commitment to defense it works. Take the 5-2 win against Tampa. The Bolts blocked a grand total of six shots in front of Ben Bishop. The Kings still missed the net 18 times. More shots got on Bishop for the Kings due to the lack of shot blocking but could you imagine had they stepped in front of more shots? Say in the double digits? Could have been different.
These are all just isolated observations and like I said when the team is winning it's hard to question what they are doing. Over the years, however, I've noticed far too many games like last night for it to be "One of those nights."
That leads me to my ultimate question: Are the Kings taking bad shots? Is there such a thing? If so is it a system thing? Or a personnel thing? No doubt we've heard about the shot mentality all the way from the Terry Murray days where "Getting pucks on net" was his stock phrase. However, there is such a thing as a BAD shot in my opinion. A shot that has no chance of going in. A shot on the rush, from outside the circles, with no traffic in front, and below the hash marks (I'm looking right at you Dustin Brown). There is quality versus quantity, and it seems like the Kings will definitely opt for quantity on a regular basis.
Maybe they are trying to hard to pick a corner. Maybe they are being too simple when it comes to offensive movement, lending to a slew of bruised shins and feet from opponents. Who knows, again and I apologize for sounding like a broken record at this point, it's not a bad thing if it's working. Last night gave me extreme flashbacks of the Terry Murray era where we were putting up 30 shots a night, losing 1-0, and scoring just under 2 goals a game as a whole. It's frustrating but hey that's Kings hockey. If you are new to it get used to it. It's not pretty, but most nights it gets the job done.
My question to you, would you like to see the Kings change their mindset to shooting? Or is it simply not our style? Gretzky is ultimately correct, you do miss 100-percent of the shots you do take. In the Kings case though it looks like you are going to miss about 50-percent of the ones you do take as well.
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