The Kings have killed 22 straight penalties since their December 4th shootout loss to the Montreal Canadiens. But their strong run of penalty killing -- which has brought them to eighth in the NHL in this category -- actually started much earlier than that.
Since November 2nd, when LA's penalty killing rate had bottomed out to 73.7%, they've killed penalties at a 90% clip (63/70).
What's changed?
A look at the underlying numbers during these two stretches -- 10/12-11/1/16 and 11/3-12/22/16 -- reveals nothing:
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This is good! -- I'll get into why later.
While a couple less shots have gotten through on average, unblocked shot attempts, scoring chances, and expected goals against have remained stable, through better and worse. All this suggests that LA's penalty killing has remained consistent the whole season, even if results haven't always reflected that.
Looking beyond these numbers for any differences, a couple things come to mind: First and most obvious is stabilized goaltending, chiefly due to Peter Budaj's emergence. There's probably also some regression to the mean involved -- the underlying numbers suggest that the Kings penalty kill wasn't as bad as it looked at the beginning of the year.
Something else that may have helped is improved discipline. From 10/12-11/1/16, Los Angeles gave up 3.8 penalties a game. Since 11/3/16, they've cut that down to 3.0. In theory, a fresher penalty kill should lead to more success.
LA Kings Insider just spoke with Anze Kopitar and Trevor Lewis about the team's improved penalty kill:
“I think the coaches, especially Johnny (Associate Coach John Stevens), they do a good job of pre-scouting every team and kind of seeing what their tendencies are,” Anze Kopitar said. “But I still think that the biggest thing for us is just worry about what we’re doing. Obviously we’re trying to be aggressive as much as we can and just kind of creating turnovers off of that and obviously faceoffs are a big part of that which we’ve managed to be quite good at it. So, I think it’s a combination of everything.”
Lewis, on whether success on the penalty kill comes from a certain mindset:
"Yeah, I think so. I think it’s all about the commitment and the shot lanes and just kind of bearing down like that. Obviously our D have been doing a really good job all year of blocking those shots from the point and I think lately our forwards have been getting in more lanes and that’s helping us a lot."
This gives us more possible causes to examine. To summarize what Kopitar and Lewis credit an improved penalty kill to:
• Faceoffs
• Creating turnovers
• Forwards getting in lanes
First, let's look at Kopitar's talk about improving at draws:
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He's bang on, as he and Nick Shore have been more reliable at the faceoff circle recently. Whether or not that's led to a more successful PK, it's hard to say, but it certainly doesn't hurt to win defensive zone faceoffs at any time.
As for creating turnovers, there are numbers which support this too. Creating turnovers on the penalty kill can go hand in hand with offensive pressure, which LA has been increasing on the PK:
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While shots attempts and scoring chances for have remained fairly stable, Los Angeles is definitely getting more shots on net while down a man.
As for forwards getting in lanes, we'll have to investigate some tape, which I'll save for another post.
What's promising is that all of LA's recent improvements on the PK seem fairly sustainable -- including Budaj's middle-of-the-road 86.14 Save% at 4v5 since 11/3/16 -- chiefly because there haven't been any enormous, unusual improvements from earlier in the year. A top-10 Kings penalty kill will go a long way toward securing a playoff berth.
Stats as of 12/22/16, courtesy of Behind the Net, Corsica, Hockey Analysis, Hockey Reference, Natural Stat Trick, NHL.com, Puckalytics, and Sporting Charts.
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