Stars at Kings: Sad Trombone

On the first night of the back-to-back, the Kings somehow scored five goals against the Ducks despite playing some of their sloppiest hockey in the last few seasons. Teams generally perform worse on the second night of back-to-backs, so there wasn’t much to hope for heading into the game at home against the Stars. Surprisingly, the Kings managed to play somewhat better, but they scored zero goals.

The highlight of the game was goaltender Kari Lehtonen’s highlight reel save on Jarret Stoll. Kyle Clifford and Drew Doughty landed a couple big hits during the second period, but those moments didn’t contribute to any offense, really, so whatever.

Other quick takeaways, mostly disappointing:

McNabb and McBain should never be a pairing. In one of the worst shifts of the night, Jamie McBain had horrendous trouble one-on-one against a Stars player, failed to control the puck when it came loose in the defensive zone, and somehow all the scrambling eventually to McNabb taking a delay of game penalty several seconds later.

Yes, it’s only been two games for the McD-Pairing. It’s also important to cut them both some slack, sure. They’re both new to the Kings, and they both came from the worst team in the league’s system. They need time to learn and adjust, but then putting these messy Bambis on the ice together right now seems like a bad move and has been so far. To Sutter’s credit, he finally broke them up late in the second period, but it probably shouldn’t have even taken that long.

Less Stoll is more. At about 12:44 per game when playing 5v5, Jarret Stoll is currently seeing a little more ice time than Jeff Carter on average.

Tonight Carter played 14:50 total and Stoll played 15:54. Carter ended the night with a +7 Corsi differential. Stoll finished +3 but had 26 percent more offensive zone starts than Carter and fluctuates between playing third and fourth line. Meanwhile Jeff Carter is a consistent second line center who actually scores goals frequently.

And it’s not like Stoll has earned it so far this season —

But of course the truly cataclysmic drop off belongs to Jarret Stoll (amazingly 6th in 5v5/TOI game among Kings Fs) pic.twitter.com/1G5Wo2Viig

— Andrew Leafman (@andrewleafman) November 14, 2014

He’s been terrible more often than not. The only reason I can think of that might explain his ridiculous ice time in spite of his poor play is that Darryl Sutter’s trying to make sure he fully returns to game shape after having hip surgery during the off-season. Perhaps the best way to see if Stoll can bounce back from that is to play him a lot and hope he evens out. That still doesn’t mean he should be playing more than Carter.

Clifford on the hustle. Surprisingly, the player who seemed to really take Sutter’s third-period benching versus the Ducks to heart the most was Kyle Clifford. Despite how useless his staged fight was at the top of the game against Dallas, he played fairly well throughout the night and ended the game a +9 in possession at even strength. Jake Muzzin came in second to him, +7.

The Kings didn’t allow 40+ shots on goal. Yay.

 
It was an average game at best, which continues to be a theme for the Kings. Martin Jones played well but let in two more goals than the other guy. Dwight King had a shorthanded breakaway opportunity that he didn’t bury. McBain missed an open net chance. Tyler Toffoli verrrrry nearly scored an empty-net own goal accidentally. Alec Martinez was injured blocking a shot, which isn’t anybody’s fault but complicates already complicated roster issues for the Kings. The team wasn’t an abomination, but they seemed to lose a lot of battles for loose pucks and didn’t really dictate play for more than a few random shifts scattered here and there.

The Kings have had better games. They’ve also had much worse. And so it goes.