It’s time to fully admit the Los Angeles Kings are in a slump. The days of relying on exceptional defensive play to win games are behind this group because in order to win, you have to score goals. It doesn’t matter how good you are at keeping the puck out of your net if you can’t execute on the other side of the ice, and the Kings have continued to prove that pretty much for the entire month of January. Once again, offensive production was scarce, although this time it quite literally was nowhere to be found as the Kings were shut out 3-0 by the Florida Panthers. In 11 of their last 12 games, they have scored two or fewer goals and have been shut out twice. They have also now lost seven of their last nine.
The Kings are blowing away their games in hand as the teams in front of them in the standings start to pull further away and the ones who were once a fair bit behind them are now knocking on the front door. One thing has been clear for a while and it’s that this team needs a scoring winger, preferably a right-handed shot that can play on the power play. While that’s probably a trade deadline move, if the offense continues to struggle the way it has been, they might not be able to afford to wait that long.
Offense Has Gone Completely Ghost
It was quite similar to the game these two teams played exactly a week ago where a third-period push led the Kings to a 2-1 win. It was the same grinding, tight-checking game, except this time there wasn’t that much of an offensive push at all. There was nothing purposeful in the way the Kings tried to create offense, nothing that gave the Panthers a tough time defending.
It was a whole lot of nothing, especially from the trio of Trevor Moore, Phillip Danault, and Warren Foegele. Now Moore and Danault have struggled offensively all season and playing them together just amplified those struggles. They created nothing and almost every chance they had to gain the zone was broken up right at the blue line.
I don’t think I’ve disliked a line more than Moore-Danault-Foegele just by watching their inability to create anything so I took a look at a few numbers at 5on5.
– They generated the lowest amount of scoring chances with 1
– They were tied with the lowest SF (count of shot…
— Raz Devraj (@razdevraj) January 30, 2025
In a lot of these games where the Kings have had trouble scoring, it wasn’t due to a…
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