Kings succeed despite dismal power play
EL SEGUNDO, CALIF. – A year ago, the Vancouver Canucks lost the Stanley Cup final primarily, in their own minds, because they could not make the Boston Bruins pay for crimes of aggression by scoring on them with the man (or men) advantage. Two-for-33, remember? The Bruins, meanwhile, won it all despite having the worst playoff power-play success rate, 11.4 per cent, of any Stanley Cup champion in history.
Cut to Sunday at the Los Angeles Kings’ practice facility ... or rather, the L.A. Lakers’ training gym, which adjoins the Kings’ digs at the Toyota Sports Center and which has been turned into a hockey media centre and interview room now that the Cup final has moved westward.
The Kings, surrounded here by the evidence of the Lakers’ sustained excellence — five NBA titles when they were still based in Minneapolis, 10 more L.A. championship banners arrayed around the gym walls — have never won a Stanley Cup, but they are two victories away from doing so, potentially with as few as two losses along the trail, in spite of a power play so dismal it makes last year’s Bruins units look practically competent.
“It’d be nice to put a banner up in our place,” said the Kings’ young franchise defenceman, Drew Doughty.
L.A.’s power play is limping along at 7.8 per cent efficiency, compared to the No. 1 playoff power play (35.7 per cent) of the Philadelphia Flyers, whom the New Jersey Devils beat in the second round with a power play less than half as productive.
So, you may ask, how important is it really? Can a really hot team, with excellent goaltending and penalty killing, make its own power-play successes or failures nearly irrelevant?
“I think it’s one of those things you should stay focused on,” Kings captain Dustin Brown said Sunday.
“Our (final) percentage is not going to be good regardless, but we have opportunities ahead of us on the power play. This whole season, we haven’t scored many (powerplay) goals. But the goals we have scored have been really key goals for us, dating to the very first series against Vancouver,” said Brown.
The Kings scored three power-play goals in the first two games against the Canucks, but they’re just three-for-65 since.
“Sometimes, the power play, you look at the percentages, it’s struggling. The flipside of that is five of them are big goals,” said Brown.
The fact is, though, the Kings have scored just six goals on 77 power-play chances, only one more goal than they’ve scored short-handed.
The players on the L.A. power-play units, despite the encouraging noises head coach Darryl Sutter keeps making, are individually and collectively ticked off at their lack of success.
Doughty, whose highlightreel, end-to-end goal in the first period of Game 2 Saturday night stood up until Ryan Carter tied it up for the Devils early in the third, pointed to the power play the Kings got with 3:05 left in the game. But L.A. didn’t make anything happen, and eventually turned the puck over and Doughty had to hook Travis Zajac to prevent a shorthanded breakaway.
“If we score there, we put them away,” he said.
The inability to score hasn’t come back to bite the Kings yet, and maybe, judging by last season’s final, it won’t.
“It hasn’t been (a factor), but we can make it a factor if we score,” Doughty said. “It’s a huge difference in the game.”
The reasons for power plays struggling more the later it goes in the playoffs are fairly obvious.
“There were times in that first game when you could only see half the puck”
DARRYL SUTTER
“I think, first off, just because of the technology, (power plays are) pre-scouted right down to the inch,” said Sutter.
“I think penalty killing becomes such a premium because it is part of the defence. Usually finals and playoffs are lower scoring. There’s not much secret in it ever. Even if you do anything different, you’ve got to practice it ... and practices are open now (to the opposition coaches).”
“Everybody is working so hard not to get scored on in the playoffs,” said Kings’ Dustin Penner.
Then, too, there is the quality of the ice in May and June.
“There were times in that first game when you could only see half the puck,” said Sutter, of the sweltering conditions in New Jersey on Wednesday.
“It was like growing up playing outside when you’d shoot it into the snow and have to go looking for the puck that had your initials on it.”