Some useful food for thought. I've brought up some of the statistics before but this is just insane and tells me we're just setting up for a burst
One of the most important uptakes:
"Over the past 18 games, the Kings have managed to score on just 15 of their 422 shots during 5-on-5 play. That's a shooting percentage of just
3.5 percent, which cannot last unless the Kings have suddenly become the worst shooting team (by a wide margin) in recent NHL history. The Kings are shooting 6.3 percent during 5-on-5 play during the season so far. Every team usually falls somewhere between the 6.5 and 9 percent range over the course of a full season.
Since 2007-08, only one team (the 2012-13 Florida Panthers at 5.94 percent) has finished a season with a percentage lower than 6 percent. This is important, since it shows that this is the type of slump that happens to every team and player every year. While unsustainably high percentages come falling back down at some point, the exact opposite happens to teams that can't seem to buy a goal for long stretches of time. This is why the number of shots a team generates is so important.
Over the past 18 games, if the Kings had shot at their season average (which is still only 29th in the league) that would have resulted in an additional 11-12 goals. Considering the Kings have lost seven of those games by one goal you might be looking at an additional one or two wins over that stretch."
http://www.sbnation.com/nhl/2014/1/29/5357488/why-cant-the-kings-score
Remember that puck luck we were talking about? Yeah. And sure, some of it is shot quality/fatigue and the like which the article addresses only in passing, but like I said, when you're watching other highlights and seeing teams bounce pucks off feet and in, or the Ducks are bouncing passes off their chests and in, or the Red Wings are bouncing it out of play and in, you know we're going to cash in eventually.
The play as a whole has actually still been trending consistently towards puck possession and we're still one of the best teams in the league at it. Sure we can make some tweaks (most notably carrying the puck in more vs. dumping it, which the above article addresses, and the breakout, and the PP), but there have only been a few games this year where we've really
looked bad, i.e. the final score hardly passes the eye test. Even my anti-Kings friends can admit "Jesus Christ you guys were dominating that whole game, how did you lose" on most every occasion.
Results matter. They will come.