Conventional wisdom would say that the Los Angeles Kings have a power play problem. And, sure, the numbers don’t lie: The Kings are currently 30th in the league with a paltry 15.2% on the power play. It’s one of the reasons that hockey analysts tend to consider the Kings “pretenders” rather than “contenders”.

But what if I told you that there doesn’t seem to be a correlation between power play success and winning the Stanley Cup? Looking back at the last 20 Cup winners tells the story of regular season power play juggernauts that fizzled out in the playoffs, as well as some very underwhelming power play units that managed to win it all in June.

Did you know that the 2008 Detroit Red Wings are the only team to lead the league in power play percentage during the regular season to go on to win the Stanley Cup in the past two decades? The vaunted Edmonton Oilers posted a video game-esque 32.4% with the man advantage only to lose to eventual champions the Vegas Golden Knights in the second round in 2023. Conversely, the 2011 champion Boston Bruins sported a pretty mediocre 16.2% during the regular season and an even worse 11.4% in the playoffs. You know who else hung up a 11.4% in the playoffs? The 2013 champion Chicago Blackhawks with that Patrick Kane guy.

If one looks specifically at LA’s two Cup-winning runs it’s A Tale of Two Cities. The 2012 formation registered a fairly pedestrian 16.9% over the regular season and then got worse in the playoffs at 12.8%. This didn’t stop them from organizing a parade that June. Two years later the Kings converted at 15.1% during the season before going off at 23.5% on the way to their second Cup in three years.

Thus, what is one to make of this? Well, hockey is complicated and flashy power play highlights don’t necessarily translate into taking home any hardware. Sometimes you run into a hot goalie that steals a series from you. Sometimes you run into a “let ‘em play” ref who doesn’t seem to want to call anything a penalty.

So maybe LA is on to something when they keep preaching defense first, as boring as it may be. The Kings have only allowed 144 goals against, the fewest in the league. It’s almost March, so this is a feature not a bug. LA is stingy and just plain hard to score on. So who knows? Maybe if the power play starts clicking in the playoffs like it did in 2014, a parade plan might be a good thing to have on hand. Just in case.