Early in a season, it's easy to have your perception of a team shaped mostly by their most recent games. For the Los Angeles Kings, that's a 4-2 loss in Colorado that saw them register just six shots in the final two periods, with zero in the second, and a 3-1 loss in Calgary. They weren't bad in Calgary, you can even argue they were goalied by Dustin Wolf a bit, but you also have to look inward when you're struggling to find the net.
Of course, the Kings aren't a team with an impotent offense, they're 15th in the league in goals per game and are still second in the Pacific Division by points percentage. The Kings aren't having a bad start to the season, far from it. However, I keep asking myself the same question, what is this team? What is their identity?
For all the criticisms that Todd McLellan and the 1-3-1 took, a lot of them were warranted, you knew the identity of his team. They would clog the middle, were extremely difficult to break down defensively and hit you on the rush. It didn't work in the playoffs and collapsed at the end, leading to McLellan's firing, but you knew what that team was going to do every night.
I don't have the same feeling with Jim Hiller's Kings team. Granted, it's early and with new faces and a new system that's to be expected somewhat, but it's something to keep an eye on.
Hiller talked in the summer about switching to the 1-2-2, giving their players more space to utilize their speed and be creative offensively, not restricted by the rigid structure of the 1-3-1. Great, you want to be a team that kills the opposition off the rush and in transition. The Kings have a few players who excel in this area like Adrian Kempe, Kevin Fiala and Quinton Byfield, but they don't have a lineup of players to play that style and especially don't have the defensive group to facilitate that kind of game.
Rob Blake spent the summer talking about getting "uncomfortable" and added players like Joel Edmundson and Tanner Jeannot who would make the team more physical, there was a clear emphasis on truculence. So you want to be a team that grinds teams down and beats teams off the cycle and wins battles in front. You have a few players who can do that but not a roster filled with them.
It's not an either-or with these two styles, but seems like the Kings are still trying to decide what version of themselves they want to be. When things are clicking they merge the two styles well and score a lot of goals around the net. But when things aren't going their way, like late against Calgary and against the Vancouver Canucks a few games back, they try to be that first team. They try to get cute with the puck and play a lot of perimeter hockey. It's okay to be creative and sometimes you need a stroke of brilliance to beat a stingy defense, but hope passes and spin-o-rama plays to the middle are low-percentage plays.
As I said earlier, it's still early and the Kings are adapting to new faces and a new system, so it's reasonable to think they figure things out. For now, they look like a team that doesn't quite know what they want to be, a team built to play two different styles.
The return of Drew Doughty at some point will help. He'll lock things down defensively and give them another defenseman who can quickly get pucks up ice if they want to be that rush/transition team, but this goes beyond one player.
The sky isn't falling after two losses, the Kings have started the season well, but they need to figure out who they want to be.