Gameday Soundtrack: Rob Scuderi Visits Some Failures For Charity

The Pittsburgh Penguins were always going to be tough opponents, but they’re heading into LA looking like monsters in comparison to the Kings right now. Though they’ve had their own patches of inconsistency this season, their offense is vastly better than the Kings’ offense, thanks in no small part of NHL points leader Sidney Crosby. He’s sitting pretty with 74 points, a whole 10 points ahead of the next best player in the league.

The Metropolitan division has been mostly laughable, but that hilarity doesn’t include Pittsburgh, who are 15 points ahead of their rivals in the standings.

As has been said many times, the Kings’ shooting percentage is at the bottom of the barrel. Even looking at all situations — a number that had been kinder to the Kings than score close situations up to now — they now rank 29th. It also doesn’t seem to matter how many shots they take at the net or where they take them from.

As far as the Kings woes being related to shot quality, 42% of all their shots have come from the scoring chance area. League average is 43%

— Robert P. (@RobertJFTC) January 29, 2014

Captain Dustin Brown has pointed out that a number of players are going through career lows. Coach Darryl Sutter blamed the tough schedule for this past road trip some, too. Could it be everything? Could it honestly be an intense stretch of bad luck?

Interestingly, history favors the Kings when playing the Penguins in LA. They’re 4-0-2 at Staples Center, but that record doesn’t look like it’s worth much at the moment, when it’s being defended by a team that’s put together two goals in their last four games.

Hey, if this had happened during the playoffs, the Kings would be… last postseason’s Pittsburgh Penguins.

Last season, this exact same Kings system finished the regular season tenth best in scoring and jumped to fantastic heights in early December. There’s evidence that it can work, but it’s absolutely not working now, and fans are getting agitated if Twitter engagement is any indication, or if you’ve set up hidden cameras in my apartment to watch me during Kings game like a creep. Fatigue or not, the Kings are going to have to dig deep and pull out their best game tonight if they hope to battle back against the Penguins’ scorers and avoid getting booed off the ice.