The Los Angeles Kings finished a back-to-back against the red-hot St. Louis Blues and the Pacific Division-leading Vegas Golden Knights with four points. For the Blues, they continued to roll, collecting a point in their defeat during extra play. In contrast, the Knights, who have an equally impressive home record, suffered their first regulation loss to a divisional opponent at home.
For a team with trouble scoring for almost ten games (realistically, the season), the Kings broke out profoundly against a contender-type opponent by shelling out six at T-Mobile Arena. That's quite a feat against one of the league's more defensively structured and higher-powered teams. These wins against big teams are starting to add up this season, and if you look at last season compared to this one, it's night and day. Against the qualified Western Conference playoff teams last year, the Kings were 9-11-3.
This year, it is against the same grouping (Vancouver's the only team not currently positioned in a playoff spot) is 12-6-1.
That's quite the improvement for a team that got pushed around by the league's upper echelon last year. Add that element with the fact that LA also made a savvy upgrade at the deadline and some legitimate optimism is starting to fall into place. Don't worry; we'll get to that. Don't start counting now, but that's 100% of the points collected post-deadline.
In the post-deadline, they have looked a different team, with the addition of Andrei Kuzmenko. With his fourth team in his third season, I had my own reservations about the player despite 39 goals in his inaugural season. However, in his small sample size, Kuzmenko has been a breath of fresh air in the top six, with excellent stickhandling, touches, and vision. This is without his element on the powerplay tapping in yet. While off the stat sheet with a pair of tertiary assists, he is a plus two while the line has been cooking during this small sample size.
Via NST, in the 24:30 of even strength, the three of Kuzmenko, Anze Kopitar, and Adrian Kempe have looked the part of a top line, with a 58.18% Corsi, a 59.46% Fenwick. The three have outshot opponents 15-7, outscored 3-1, and out-chanced 12-8. High danger-wise, the trio has out-chanced opponents 9-4, outscoring 3-0. With this new top line, things have fallen into place.
Alex Turcotte, who was following the Quinton Byfield arc to success and playing as the top-line wing, now plays as a winger next to the two most physically imposing players in the entire organization. This might be the safest Turcotte can be, coming from three-plus seasons of injury-plagued hockey. While their numbers are skewed based off their performance against the Blues (in their 15:49 together, 40.63% CF, 36.84% FF, being outscored 1-0, outshot 6-7, and out-chanced 6-5), they have been establishing more of an identity in the bottom six after a much better game on the road against Vegas (50% CF, 60% FF). If that line starts to gel, it'll be potential boom times for the Kings.
That's exactly it, boom times. The top line looks to be flourishing, and that's without a single practice from Kuzmenko with his new linemates, hurled into hockey's form of a doubleheader with 10 minutes of intro and a proverbial Kings system brochure. Speaking of brochures, check out the page that covers 'identity line: hard-working, with scoring touch'.
The Phillip Danault line has become just that, despite having the ingredients and flavor of a shutdown line. The line has Warren Foegele, the most underrated free agent signing in the league's offseason, and Trevor Moore, who is finally looking like his first half of the 2023-24 season "The Raven" self. Those three were pivotal against the Knights, and their numbers back it up (54.76% CF, 55.17% FF, 12-7 SCF/A, 4-1 HDCF/A).
That includes back-breaking goals from Foegele (4th goal when it was 3-2) and Moore (5th goal when it was 4-2). After losing a 3-0 lead to tighten a game up at 3-2? A single line goes out and makes it 5-2.
Credit goes to the whole line, but also circling back to Foegele, who has six points in four games against Vegas this year, scoring in each contest (4g, 2a, +4). Foegele also scored in every game against Dallas, likely the Western Conference favorite this year.
Foegs’ goal changed the game because they pushed and that was a big-time goal. We don’t see a lot of those individual efforts where one guy just kind of goes and does it on his own and we saw two tonight, Moresies too. That was the goal, I thought, that was most important- Jim Hiller, postgame VGK 3.9: Credit Zach Dooley
This doesn't include the Kevin Fiala and Byfield connection, which has reinvigorated the team's scoring depth and, at times, has been the Kings' primary go-to offensive drive during the second half. The two together have been dynamite in their 270 minutes together 5on5 (58.94% CF, 60.46% FF, 141-106 SF/A, 14-10 GF/A, 139-98 SCF/A, 61-36 HDCF/A). The sprinkling in of Alex Laferriere has not burst out the stat sheet for Laferriere and the trio yet, but they look to have four lines right now that can either play to the Kings' identity or be a scoring threat.
Is it gaudy to say things are looking up? That the team might actually be able to compete with the big guns out West? Things are shaping up to be so, with some credit actually going to Rob Blake so far, in the small sample size against pretty ferocious competition out of the deadline.
That power play improves with Kuzmenko, and all these lines start to click, and boy, oh boy. Feeling dangerous yet?