LOS ANGELES — After succeeding massively at home last season, this year’s Kings have staged one Southwest Airlines commercial after another at Crypto.com Arena.
Wanting to get away would be understandable, not only after another painfully flat showing at home against the Calgary Flames Saturday, but in light of the Kings’ overall home/road disparity. Their .735 points percentage in away games dwarfs their .429 mark at home, where they score more than a full goal less per game. As a result, they have a -6 goal differential at home and a +11 on the road.
Yet this upcoming trip will put even the most seasoned travelers to the test. They’ll begin Monday in Dallas, where the Stars have gone to three straight conference finals as well as a fourth and a Stanley Cup Final in this decade. Since 2020, only two teams are two-time champions that have also won the Eastern Conference. The Kings will play them both back-to-back, visiting the Florida Panthers Wednesday and Tampa Bay Lightning Thursday.
For their part, the Kings were thinking less about the opponents ahead than their own desiccated offense. After bursting forth with 10 goals in two wins, they’ve managed to dribble out just three in two losses that both came in overtime. They are the fifth lowest-scoring team in the NHL this season, and only the New York Rangers have been more feeble at home.
“In both those last two games, we just didn’t generate [scoring chances], again,” Kings coach Jim Hiller said.
In the first of their previous two victories, Andrei Kuzmenko tallied a power-play goal in a romp over Chicago that finally had him looking like the player who invigorated the muddling Kings at last year’s trade deadline. Yet an avoidable icing and some other oversights in a win over Utah appeared to return him to the doghouse for healthy scratches Nos. 4 and 5 of the campaign. The second scratch was despite the absence of Phillip Danault (illness) on Saturday, when Samuel Helenius drew in but played just 2:34.
Earlier in the season, Hiller said he had no issue with Kuzmenko’s effort or defense, two areas where previous coaches often had issues with the zany Russian winger. That was despite his apparent distrust of Kuzmenko in the playoffs last year, when the creaky Trevor Lewis frequently replaced him in vital moments of games, and, most recently, Kuzmenko’s two separate stints in the pressbox.
“He’s not a fourth-line player,” Hiller said Saturday. “He’s either going to come in and play in the top nine and be on the power play, or else I don’t think it benefits us to play him on the fourth line.”
While Kuzmenko is literally prohibited from scoring by spending recent evenings in a suit rather than suited up, Quinton Byfield has been equally absent from the offense. Byfield has just nine shots on goal in his past eight games. He had just two points during that span and three in his last 13 games, all assists.
He’s barely on pace for double-digit goals this season, thanks in part to a reluctance to shoot the puck and an affinity for purposeless passes. One user on the platform formerly known as Twitter referred to Byfield as “Ben Simmons on skates.”
“In practice yesterday, (Byfield) shot the puck really well, he scored about four goals in practice. Guys were banging their sticks on the ice for him and that just didn’t carry over to tonight,” said Hiller, who concurred with Hockey Royalty’s Russell Morgan that Byfield was still hesitant to shoot.
“He had some real looks. Sometimes they’re not perfect, but I think you’ve just got to start there,” Hiller continued. “You’ve just got to start putting them on net, even if it’s from bad angles. You might be out just a little ways, and so I’m sure he’d be the first one to say that he passed a couple up.”
In Dallas, Byfield and buddies will face a well-rounded Stars club that ranks in the top 10 in terms of goals-for (eighth), goals-against (sixth), power-play conversion rate (second) and penalty-kill percentage (ninth). Arcadia product Jason Robertson is one of just three 20-goal scorers in the league this year.
The Panthers’ pursuit of a three-peat has been fettered by the continued unavailability of Matthew Tkachuk (adductor muscle surgery) and Aleksander Barkov (reconstructive knee surgery). Even without their two best players, they’ve compiled only three fewer points than the Kings.
Tampa Bay shook off a shaky start to ascend to a points tie with Todd McLellan’s Detroit Red Wings atop the Atlantic Division entering Sunday’s slate of games. The Bolts’ fourth-ranked defense and third-place penalty kill are bolstered by a top-heavy offense led by Nikita Kucherov and Brandon Hagel. On D, they’ll likely be without the imposing Victor Hedman (elbow) until after February’s Olympic break.