The Los Angeles Kings kicked off their three-game Central Division road trip on Wednesday, falling 3-1 to the St. Louis Blues.
On one hand, the Kings heavily outshot the Blues and finished with higher expected goals. That's a good thing, right? An indication that the Kings were unlucky and ran into a hot goalie.
There's definitely an element of that. It had the feel of "just one of those games," or as Todd McLellan often said, "we have to tip our hat to their goalie."
However, we've heard those comments a lot after Kings games this season.
After a red-hot start to the season where everything they touched seemed to go in, the Kings have struggled to consistently create offense for a while.
There seemed to be a bump after McLellan was let go and Jim Hiller was promoted to head coach, but the offensive woes appear to be returning.
We've seen it a few times recently and the Kings' 2-2-1 record in their last five games isn't bad, but isn't great either.
Especially when you factor in one of those wins being an unconvincing victory over a struggling Ottawa Senators team.
Of course, things aren't all bad for this team. They've certainly improved under Hiller and are still pacing to comfortably make the playoffs.
But warning signs are creeping back in.
How many times in January did we say, "Hey, the Kings weren't bad this game but just couldn't quite finish and didn't quite get the goaltending they needed."
It was a constant fixture during that period and it's started to rear its head a little.
Plenty of credit goes to Jordan Binnington on Wednesday, but when a team consistently underperforms their expected goals and has too many games where the goalie "stole" a game, it's time to start looking at the team.
We've seen this team score at will, and it appears Adrian Kempe might be heating up, but they need to find a way to consistently convert on their chances.
They would also benefit from more production on the backend from players not named Drew Doughty.
Outside of Doughty and Jordan Spence, the Kings lack true puck movers and the downsides of that show on nights like Wednesday.
It's good to have defensively sound players on your backend, but another puck mover, ideally a high-end one, could do wonders for the Kings.
They'll like their chances of bouncing back on Friday with a win over the Chicago Blackhawks, a crucial game for this road trip as they face the Dallas Stars on Saturday.