Last night's xGF for Kings 2.82, xGA 2.56. Clearly a pretty close game from the expected stat point of view.
Yeah the Leafs put up a better fight than most give them credit for, they had their dangerous moments. The Kings were obviously the better team but the gap wasn't huge as the booing made out.
I generally don't think x stats by themselves are great indicators until 20+ games or so, but looking at the gap in individual games will confirm what you see on the ice in a broad sense. I'm sure some of that isn't necessarily cause and effect, so you have to take care.
It's a good general stat, it just ignores things like event timing which plays a huge outcome on the results of any single game. But if I didn't watch the games, didn't know it was the Kings, and saw those stats in a vacuum, they indicate the following:
The team was only "out-expected" in their first game, otherwise, they played well enough to win, and probably should have won, nearly all other games. There weren't any close games where xGA is much higher than what the other team actually scored, so their goalies aren't stealing games - they are outplaying teams by a decent margin. There are only 3 games (Jets, Knights, and Leafs) where the team got stronger goaltending and fewer were let in than expected. There were 3 games (Carolina, Bruins, Coyotes #2) where there was a large difference in actual goals vs. expected, indicating the goalie shit the bed. The team is gifted offensively as there are only 3 games where they scored less than expected. Overall the team is solid defensively compared to the rest of the league. Their goalkeeping isn't absolutely terrible, but while it's improving and not hurting them like early in the season it still needs to get better consistently. Overall they are a well-coached team that is performing above standard in most areas.
It's hard to completely separate, but I think that's a pretty fair assessment of the team so far.