By the numbers: Game 36 vs. Los Angeles

Scoring Chances

San Jose

Los Angeles

Period-by-Period Summary

Easily one of San Jose's worst efforts of the season on scoring chances, getting outchanced by the Kings 17-10 overall, and 12-6 at even strength. When your fourth line really only has one NHL player, and it somehow manages to be your best line by scoring chance differential, it's pretty clear you've had a bad night. As much as I'd like to take heaps of solace in the fact that Brenden Dillon once again managed a positive scoring chance differential, the fact of the matter is that the Kings had a lead for quite a bit of the game last night, and given score effects, we should've seen a lot more Sharks end up with better looking scoring chance numbers than we did.

Another thing that pops out here is LA's numbers on the powerplay. It seemed apparent from the first few seconds of LA's first powerplay last night that their powerplay was going to have a good night, as on that powerplay specifically, they had the Sharks running around in their own zone, mixing up on coverage, and causing general havoc in their offensive zone with their crisp, speedy puck movement. This translated to the Kings generating quite a few scoring chances on their powerplay, and generating one of their goals. Final note on scoring chances, funny seeing how Jarret Stoll ended up with a -1 scoring chance differential at even strength, in a game where his team had a +6 scoring chance differential. Stoll's been a weak point of the King's roster for a few years now, and I think last night's numbers are a hilarious example of that.

Zone Entries

San Jose

Los Angeles

I guess if there's one positive that you can take out of these numbers, it's that Patty had a very Patty-esque game, carrying the puck in five times on five entry attempts. Other than that, nothing really stands out as great for the Sharks out of these numbers. They carried the puck in less than Los Angeles, they managed fewer Fenwick events than LA on their entries, had one more failed entry than LA, and overall attempted far fewer entries.

On the Los Angeles side of things, the list of players with good entry numbers for the Kings basically reads as a list of their most notable players in general, as Toffoli, Kopitar, Gaborik, Carter, and Doughty had excellent nights through the neutral zone. Other than that group of five, Brown had a pretty good game as well (especially given that he didn't wipe Hertl's knee out of existence again), and overall, if I had to guess, I'd say the Kings probably had a higher carry-in percentage in this game than they usually do.

Entry Targeting

San Jose

Los Angeles

Basically more of the same on entry targeting for Braun, Vlasic, Burns and Dillon, on the SJ side of things. Where things differed far from the usual this game was on the Sharks' third pairing, as Tennyson and Hannan both bucked their season trends, with Tennyson defending against entries quite well, and Hannan doing quite the opposite.

I don't think it comes as a surprise to anyone to see most of the numbers here for the Kings defensemen (aside from maybe McBain), as Matt Greene showed just how thankful Kings fans should be that he's paired with Martinez, and also generally has played on their third pair. The rest of the Kings' defensemen did quite well, with Doughty's numbers (zero carry-ins against on six entry attempts against) standing out quite a bit, as well as Muzzin's and Martinez'.

Zone Exits

San Jose

Los Angeles

First thing I did when looking at these numbers was compare the Team totals between San Jose and LA. That went something like this: "hey, the Sharks had a higher overall success%! Oh, but a much lower exit success%... oh and like, a 10% higher turnover %, wow that's great." While Braun and Tennyson had good nights on zone exits, their work just wasn't enough to cover for the rest of the D-corps only managing two successful zone exits. Looking at the forwards, Sheppard had yet another good game on exits, and (while we should all really consider the ridiculously small sample size here) Haley showed that he might just provide more value to this team than Scott or Brown (though I will still maintain that Tierney is clearly a better option to have in the lineup).

Other than Jeff Carter putting up some obscenely good numbers, what really caught my eye here was that every single one of the Kings' defensemen managed at least one successful zone exit last night. I can't recall the last time the Sharks' D were all able to perform a successful zone exit in a game. I think there's plenty of excuses available to explain why last night's game went so poorly (first game after the break, SJ missing three quality top-nine forwards, etc.), but I think the success with which the Kings' D exited the zone, specifically compared to the Sharks' D, is a good place to point to first and foremost.