The Los Angeles Kings are enduring a brutal scoring slump, raising questions about their offensive strategy and potentially leading to trade speculation.
On the precipice of a winless road trip, the Kings limped into Raleigh for Saturday’s finale of a five-game trek, in which they’ll be opposed by the Carolina Hurricanes . For the ‘Canes, the big story remained their recent acquisition of a copious scorer, former Colorado winger Mikko Rantanen , who’s accumulated more points than all but three other players over the past five seasons. He has a goal, an assist and 13 shots on net in three games since the swap (2-0-1).
Carolina boasts the East’s second-best points percentage and a fierce 20-5-1 record at the Lenovo Center, tying the Winnipeg Jets for the most home wins in the NHL. For the Kings, there is only the complete and utter absence of offense, as they close in on the longest scoreless streak in the NHL this season. They’ve gone 162:55 without a goal, and even that last marker was an own goal by their opponent. Per Kings broadcaster Nick Nickson, they are in a position to surpass the Seattle Kraken’s season-long goalless drought in the first period at Carolina. Could the Kings –– they’ve languished offensively over the past 14 months and particularly so in light of back-to-back games with no goals, just four scores in their past four outings and a stretch with 11 of 12 contests in which they squeezed out two or fewer goals –– also be looking at a trade? Coach Jim Hiller and captain Anže Kopitar eschewed the notion of needing outside help to right the ship and fortify an offense that’s ranked 28th of 32 teams (and could very soon fall to 29th) in goals since Nov. 1. “I wouldn’t say the confidence is sky-high right now,” Kopitar told reporters. “But sometimes all it takes is a little bounce or a little something to spark the group. We’re still confident that it’s within this room.” Compounding their woes, the Kings have had three goals disallowed during this journey, routine breaks that have been magnified enormously by the fact that they have “dried up,” in the words of Hiller. Between misfortune and self-inflicted wounds, fans could be forgiven for having flashbacks to last season, when the Kings opened the year gliding gleefully before slipping into darkness in January. Hiller harkened back to that gloom when he said that the same group that had been blanked for eight consecutive periods and owned the NHL’s most feeble attack this month was once more successful, albeit with a less-than-reassuring caveat. “This is the same group of guys who played extremely well and won a lot of games,” Hiller told reporters. “The puck was going in for them then. I don’t think it’s ever going to go in at a really high rate for us, that’s clear, but it’s going to go in more than it is.” Yet this wasn’t quite the same group as earlier in the year, and a post from former NHL goalie and uber-connected insider Kevin Weekes suggested that recent lineup changes may have been a harbinger of a deal on the horizon. Wednesday, Drew Doughty (broken ankle) returned and played over 23 minutes in his season debut, then dove headlong into a second game in two nights, in which Hiller admitted Doughty “didn’t have as much gas” across almost 28 minutes of ice time. Watching both games from the pressbox was another right defenseman and former lottery pick, Brandt Clarke, and if the results from the early or even the not-so-early season have changed, his absence might have had something to do with it. Yet the Kings sat Clarke in Florida under the hazy aegis of rest. They prioritized some unspecific constancy over game-breaking plays, which may offer the best explanation yet as to why scoring a goal now requires a rain dance and a sacrifice to Huitzilopochtli. “He’s done great to get to this point,” Hiller told reporters, before steering his commentary into a puzzling direction. “He finally got to be a healthy scratch.”“But he’s played really well,” Hiller continued. “This league will wear you down as a young player, and this will give himself a reset. We’ll see where it goes from here.” Where it went from there was holding Clarke out again a night later. Hiller offered no rationale as to why Clarke, 21, needed another evening off when it was Doughty, 35, who had returned from a nearly four-month layoff just 24 hours earlier, when his welcome-back party was foiled by a goal and two assists from his nemesis Matthew Tkachuk. The Kings had employed the 11-7 configuration liberally, including using considerably less prominent players than either Doughty or Clarke as the seventh defenseman. In the back-to-back set, they opted to dress 12 forwards, despite having optioned center Samuel Helenius to the minors to make room for Doughty and leaving nine defenseman on their roster. Even in a six-rearguard alignment, inserting Clarke for a left shot would have balanced out the pairing
NHL Kings Trade Rumors Scoring Drought Brandt Clarke Drew Doughty Carolina Hurricanes Mikko Rantanen
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