On one hand, there’s Tim Thomas and Jonathan Quick. On another, Matt Murray and Adin Hill.
The degree to which a team expects quality goaltending year-round and receives it in the postseason is blurry. Your preconceived notions are probably accurate.
Is playoff goaltending a crapshoot? It often is. Does established regular season success foretell playoff success? More often than it doesn’t, and defined more clearly in the later rounds.
It’s an important study for the 2023-24 LA Kings, who’ve stepped firmly into their championship window with a talented group of skaters whose missive will be to qualify for the playoffs and win at least one round.
The weakness of this team, again, will be in goal. Cam Talbot and David Rittich have joined Pheonix Copley as major question marks behind a squad that again demonstrated upper-echelon attacking and suppression metrics. In 2022-23, Los Angeles ranked between 9th and 11th in expected goals-for percentage at 5×5, scoring chances for and against per 60 minutes at 5×5, sixth in pure five-on-five possession rates, fourth in power play, fourth in shots-against in all situations – and, only after a late-season renaissance sparked by Joonas Korpisalo, a goaltending rental, 22nd in save percentage. Of the 16 playoff teams, only Seattle’s .9072 5×5 save percentage was lower than Los Angeles’ .9074.
The Pacific Division presents both a challenging landscape and, if one squints, an encouraging template.
Vegas’ Adin Hill finished third in Conn Smythe Trophy voting. A goaltending afterthought who entered his 26-year-old season with 63 career starts and a losing record for nonthreatening Arizona and San Jose teams, he was dynamite as the eventual Stanley Cup champions dealt with inconsistencies in net and injuries across their roster. Less successful in the postseason was Edmonton’s Stuart Skinner, who finished runner-up to Matty Beniers in Calder Trophy voting because somebody had to. Having turned 24 in November, the rookie usurped Mike Smith’s starting role and was very good down the stretch before hitting a postseason wall, a development that contributed to the Oilers’ second round knockout at the hands of the Golden Knights.
“No matter what, [your goaltender] needs to be good during the year, and he needs to be great for two months. That’s the way to win,” Kings President Luc Robitaille said when we chatted just prior to July 1 free agency. “We can say anything about Adin Hill – he was really good in the playoffs.”
In the regular season, Skinner ranked 10th amongst qualifying goaltenders in venue and score-adjusted goals-saved above average, a higher ranking than the average ranking of second round goaltenders who started at least two-thirds of their team’s playoff games in 12 of the last 13 seasons. Only one goalie, Dallas’ Jake Oettinger, ranked higher in 2022-23. Hill ranked 33rd. Seattle, the third Pacific team to make the second round, banked on a healthy run by Philipp Grubauer, who in the regular season ranked 46th.
“You’ve got to get in first,” Robitaille said. “It’s so hard to make the playoffs, and that’s the first thing you’ve got to focus on, and then you’ve got to focus on winning it all. You’re trying to build a team to win it all, and you want your goalie, if he’s able to be a .910, .915 save percentage during the year, to go up to .925, .930. That really gives you a chance in a big moment.”
Since 2010-11, only three Stanley Cup Finals pitted two goaltenders who’d finished in the top-10 in GSAA against each other: Tim Thomas (1) and Roberto Luongo (4) in 2011, Andrei Vasilevskiy (10) and Anton Khudobin (1) in 2020, and Darcy Kuemper (5) and Vasilevskiy (7) in 2022. Over that span, the mean of Cup-winning goaltenders ranked 15.4 in regular season GSAA, the runner-up 17.5. That doesn’t count Matt Murray, who in 2015-16 provided very good numbers in too small a regular season sample size to qualify for the chart.
Still, a top-10 goalie in regular season GSAA won seven Cups in 13 years, compared to only three – Murray (42) in 2017, Braden Holtby (51) in 2018, and Hill (33) in 2023 – who ranked worse than 30th.
The second round qualifier is used because it’s the baseline by which Los Angeles’ success will be judged in the spring of 2024, the 10-year anniversary of their last team to win a playoff round.
The Kings should have the firepower to better their impressive offensive statistics, and if the 2022-23 team was often able to outscore its deficiencies, this year’s club should do so to a wider margin even with three forwards shuttled off to Winnipeg in major off-season roster construction.
Most visibly supporting that thesis is the player in return, Pierre Luc-Dubois, whose nose for the net is complemented by a firmness that belies the second most important roster deficiency: middling physicality at both ends of the ice. There’s also the early-career production coming from Brandt Clarke and Jordan Spence, which should rely more on Clarke but comes with question marks and inherent risk, given one is 20 and the other 22. Arthur Kaliyev, who must improve his defensive commitment – a familiar knock that kept him out of the first round of the draft in 2019 – needs to establish himself as more than simply a power play weapon, something he hinted at before a December broken foot wiped out his first half gains. He was rarely a factor in the second half and a healthy scratch in three playoff games but at 22 is a relatively safe bet to grow in all areas of his game.
An enormous wild card whose development represents more than what he’ll contribute individually to the 2023-24 club is Quinton Byfield. He’s coming off a season in which he showed an encouraging and well-rounded skill set that would salivate team management – had he been drafted 15th overall. There’s no question the former number two pick is an NHL player, one who should enjoy a lengthy and productive career. But he hasn’t yet demonstrated individual goal scoring or offensive contribution commensurate to his draft slot, let alone in comparison to elite talent Tim Stutzle, whom Los Angeles also strongly considered and was selected one pick after him. Because the Kings missed when selecting Alex Turcotte fifth overall the year prior, Byfield’s personal offensive improvement, even if it hasn’t reached a critical stage, will offer a clearer picture towards whether the championship window can be sustained after 36-year-old Anze Kopitar skates off to the big Lake Bled in the sky.
Last year’s on-ice Byfield-Kopitar numbers were tremendous, significantly better than the Alex Iafallo-Kopitar rates established in 2017-18, when the Hall of Fame center was nominated for the Hart Trophy. It is not mutually exclusive with the need for Byfield to show he can carry more of that weight himself, even if he’s not quite on the precipice of transitioning back to center from wing nor usurping any sort of role from the franchise legend. “As of right now, we will continue to have QB on the wing to begin the upcoming season,” General Manager Rob Blake told Forum Report earlier this summer. “We’ve been very impressed with the steps he took down the stretch last season with more ice time and a bigger role playing alongside Kopitar and Kempe.”
Again, top-six playmaking wingers can be had well below the second overall pick. But Byfield is comfortably cushioned by the team’s strongest attribute, a constant during their Stanley Cup years. Their center depth is of Stanley Cup caliber.
There was too steep a drop-off from Kopitar and Phillip Danault to Blake Lizotte and Rasmus Kupari in last year’s playoffs, when Los Angeles was unable to win the depth even strength match-ups while getting picked apart on the power play by McDavid and Draisaitl, lynchpins of the best unit in league history.
That combination still exists in the Pacific, but the Kings will be more equipped to win the even strength match-ups against a contending Edmonton team while appropriately challenging Vegas’ group of Jack Eichel, Chandler Stephenson, William Karlsson and Nicolas Roy.
“We think it’s going to be a great matchup,” Robitaille said. “You look at our conference, and like I said, it’s hard to get in, and it’s hard to get out of the first round, and the next round. You can be strong down the middle, and it helps you. God forbid you have injuries or anything like that. This kid (Dubois) is a gamer, and that’s what we liked the most about him.”
Robitaille emphatically shot down the suggestion that Senior Advisor to the General Manager Marc Bergevin, linked to Dubois and hot on his tail during his tenure as Montreal’s general manager, was a driving force in the blockbuster trade. “Absolutely not true,” Robitaille said, adding, “I swear to you on my kids and my parents.”
“We sat in the room, and the entire hockey department was like, ‘yes, he can help us.’”
It’s a transaction with considerable influence on the success of an organizational rebuild steered by Robitaille’s cultural molding and Blake’s personnel maneuvering. From the outset, the team has wanted to grow more skilled and offensively inclined. In 2022-23, that focus took a substantial step as the team improved by 39 goals year-over-year, leaping from 20th to 10th in goals per game.
Goals against also rose by 22 year-over-year as they settled into a middle-of-the-pack group whose structural acuity was beset by inconsistent goaltending and a penalty kill that finished 24th. Familiar shorthanded contributors Iafallo and Kupari – the latter was excellent on the kill in the second half but was picked apart by Edmonton in the playoffs – were traded to Winnipeg for Dubois, who has never factored into an NHL penalty kill.
There is ample competition for shorthanded minutes. Trevor Lewis returns to reclaim both his Unsung Hero Award and a healthy share of responsibility after averaging 1:43 of shorthanded time per game with Calgary over the last two seasons. Of returnees, “Blake Lizotte is someone that comes to mind,” according to Blake.
“We asked him to play a few different roles for us at times last year. He provides a lot of energy, isn’t afraid to be aggressive on the puck and sacrifices the body. I trust Todd and his staff to make the appropriate personnel and systematic changes to help better our PK units.”
The group that opens the season is not the group the Kings will enter the playoffs with, should they qualify as widely expected. Ethan Moreau, Trent Hunter and Scott Parse began October with the championship 2011-12 club, while Jonathan Bernier was expected to absorb more of Jonathan Quick’s starts in goal. Jack Johnson was still weeks away from Tebowing.
Instead, it was Dwight King scoring four goals in the five-game Phoenix series, the written-off Dustin Penner potting crucial game-winners in Vancouver and Phoenix, and Jonathan Quick settling for the Conn Smythe Trophy amidst being robbed of the Vezina.
While it can be said about many teams in a league less reliant on elite goaltending, this year’s team doesn’t have the same backbone in net as currently constructed – even if grading off a curve. Los Angeles’ .907 even strength save percentage last season ranked 22nd and was boosted by Korpisalo’s late season quality. Should they simply receive league-average goaltending, an argument can be made that this year they’re just as capable of winning the competitive Pacific Division as the Golden Knights and Oilers. Willing to lean on opponents, the Kraken shouldn’t be dismissed, either.
Aesthetically, a Pacific Division banner would look sharp at Crypto.com Arena. Emotionally, it’s meaningless. A dirty banner, as Darryl Sutter famously said – often. The bar by which this team will be judged is whether they qualify for the second round. Todd McLellan, entering the final year of his five-year contract, is as squarely on the hot seat as any coach. A below-average start has the potential to cost him his job.
The team Blake will hand to him is the most talented in his L.A. tenure, though flawed in areas that will be difficult to rectify without some Adin Hill Magic. Can Talbot, who has a sneaky .921 save percentage over 33 playoff games but whose regular season mark has dropped three years in a row, manifest a dream run? Can Rittich? Copley? Erik Portillo? A midseason acquisition?
Given Hill’s excellence winning a copycat league, will teams place less emphasis on a certified number one dynamo?
“I’m not sure we’re trying to copy, we’re just trying to see what’s the best thing for us to do. Like, everybody was saying, ‘(Connor) Hellebuyck is available,’ and he might be, but the costs would be extremely high, and then he’s 31 and you’ve got to sign him for what is it, like five years minimum? It could be as much as eight years. And then, you’re like, ‘does it work?’ It works for the player, but does it work for the franchise? You don’t know. Maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t, but it’s a big risk.”
No cheat code signals surefire postseason success. Linus Ullmark, last year’s best goaltender according to the data, was bounced in the first round. In the five seasons from 2010-11 to 2014-15, 15 second round goalies finished in the top-five in score and venue-adjusted GSAA. In the eight seasons since, it’s only 13.
In a league increasingly defined by skill and scoring, the Kings should improve on their skill and scoring. At best, goaltending is a defining question mark.
All data via Evolving Hockey, Natural Stat Trick
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