Why Were The Pittsburgh Penguins Outplayed By The Kings?

By any measure, the game played by the Pittsburgh Penguins yesterday in Los Angeles was a miserable effort. The team was beaten to almost every puck. The Penguins could not enter the offensive zone to establish pressure.

To add insult to injury, Marc-Andre Fleury was left to his own devices in net several times. It’s becoming routine for Fleury due to bad coverage and defensive breakdowns in front of him.

The defensive issues are not a real surprise. The Pens blueline has not gelled well top to bottom regardless of the pairings. Mistakes like Phil Kessel‘s lapse on the Jake Muzzin goal or Rob Scuderi‘s poor positioning on Milan Lucic‘s first goal have been all too common.

The best the Pittsburgh Penguins can hope for is a patchwork solution on the back end without General Manager Jim Rutherford making a trade. It wouldn’t hurt if head coach Mike Johnston were to sit Rob Scuderi as well…

The offensive woes? Those are a bit harder to swallow. The Pittsburgh Penguins are known for their top-end offensive talent. Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin are both top five players in the NHL. The offseason pickup of Phil Kessel was meant to push the pedal down even farther and give the Penguins a threat to replace the departed James Neal.

The Los Angeles Kings

Watching the Los Angeles Kings do their work in and out of the offensive zone yesterday was like having a front row seat to a master class on controlled zone entries. It was easy to see what they can do for your offense. The Kings possess a lot of big bodies to be sure. This is something the Pittsburgh Penguins lack in their forward depth. However a lot of those LA Kings players can also play very good hockey.

The Kings lead the league at 57.1 Corsi For percentage going into the month of December. Corsi For is the stat backing up what our eyes see about the “tilt of the ice” in a given game. It also serves as a measure for the tilt of the ice for a team during a given season or period of time.

In short, the opposing team has the ice heavily tilted against them when facing the Kings. It’s been that way for several seasons. They suffocate the opposition’s shots with strong defense, and through consistent puck movement and stable zone entries they get their own pucks on the net more often than not game-to-game.

Corsi For is the percentage of the total difference between Corsi events (shots for and against including blocked shots). Teams that sit at greater than 50% are controlling the puck more and spending more time in the offensive zone than teams who fall below 50%.

The Pittsburgh Penguins, by comparison, are ranked 22nd in the league at Corsi For with 48.4 percent so far in 2015-16. In fact, the Pittsburgh Penguins had not been a strong puck possession team since the 2009-2012 stretch under Dan Bylsma. They’ve batted under 50% starting with the 2012-13 season until 2014-15.

Under the tutelage of Mike Johnston they improved to 52.8 percent. Yes, the same Mike Johnston that is behind the bench this season.

What’s changed? And why has it changed? How has the team went from 5th in the league in possession in 2014-15 to 22nd in the span of one year? Almost all of the personnel is the same as is the head coach.

Controlled Zone Entries

Right now the Pittsburgh Penguins are struggling to enter the offensive zone.

Too often the team dumps the puck into the corner only to see it go in the other direction on the opposition’s stick. The Penguins do not have the kind of tenacious forwards that would make such a strategy rewarding.

There have been numerous statistical studies on the relation of controlled zone entries and shot generation versus uncontrolled entries and shots generated from that. The most successful teams in today’s NHL have systems built around entering the zone with the puck on your stick because it’s the best way to generate consistent offense. By far.

The Nashville Predators

The most recent example of this phenomenon is the Nashville Predators.

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• Ryan Graves Solid Signing For The Pittsburgh Penguins

Under Barry Trotz the Nashville Predators employed a system that relied on dump and chase due to both a lack of talent and Trotz’s insistence on “getting the puck deep”. They finished 29th in the NHL in Corsi For percentage in 2010-11 at 46.6. Subsequent seasons never saw the Preds climb higher than 23rd at 48.5 percent.

That number is remarkably close to the Pittsburgh Penguins current percentage this season. The Nashville Predators had enough defensive depth to allow them to play that brand of 50/50 hockey and make the playoffs from time to time. However they never had any sustained success once they got there.

With a new coach in 2014-15, Peter Laviolette‘s up tempo offensive system took the Predators from 23rd in Corsi For all the way to 7th in the NHL at 52.7 percent. They were the best team in the NHL for the majority of the season before a shooting slump derailed the last third of their campaign.

This season the Predators sit 2nd in the league behind the Kings at 55.2 percent Corsi For.

Next: Penguins Power Play Boot Camp

One cure for the Pittsburgh Penguins offensive woes is to shore up their neutral zone presence. Forget about dumping the puck in except during strategic situations.

An emphasis on a clean exits and entries from both zones would do wonders for this team. They don’t have the personnel to encourage dump and chase. It is easier said than done, but this change is a necessary one going forward for the Pittsburgh Penguins to maximize their current personnel.

From there they can begin to generate the quantity of shots that were winning them games in the glory years of Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin.

This approach will also relieve some of the pressure on their patchwork defense and Marc-Andre Fleury.