Kings vs Red Wings Game Grades

The Kings dropped a heartbreaker on Sunday afternoon despite dominating the action for much of the game. Jonathan Quick still looks off. It appears that Jonathan Bernier might get the start against the Blues. In the meantime, let’s checkout how the Kings graded out yesterday.

For more info on the game, check out Eric’s recap.

Game Grades

Forward Lines

• 1st line (Gagne – Kopitar – Brown), Grade: A Matched against the Datsyuk line. Potted a goal and recorded several good scoring opportunties. Were able to control the puck by exclusively gaining the offensive zone through carrying the puck in. Defensive zone coverage was excellent. Limited chances against, denied possession and half of their d-zone touches directly resulted in a successful zone exit. The only real negative for the unit was the fact that they took two bad penalties.
• 2nd Line(Clifford-Carter-Williams), Grade: A Justin Williams had a great game. He helped gain the zone by causing turnovers and beating Red Wings‘ defensemen to the puck on several occaisons. The line totalled 20 shot attempts and 9 scoring chances. Unfortunately, they were stonewalled by Jimmy Howard and weren’t able to translate their dominance into any 5v5 goals (they were however on ice for Martinez’ game tying marker which was a 6v5 situation). They also were hard-matched against the Henrik Zetterberg line which makes their dominance even more eye-popping.
• 3rd Line (King-Richards-Nolan), Grade: D Matched against Detroit’s third line, they had a hard time driving play and generating offense. In contrast to the Kings top 6, they defaulted to playing dump and chase on zone entries and were beaten to the puck more often than not. Mike Richards only had two touches in the defensive zone and was mostly invisible.
  
• 4th Line (Richardson-Stoll-Lewis), Grade: D Similar story to the Kings 3rd line. Soft matchup, not effective at puck control or generating offense. Richardson was -7 in shot attempts and -4 in chances. Their only real positive was Trevor Lewis‘ defensive zone work. Despite his limited minutes he had a lot of touches in his own end which led to the Kings getting the puck out. This line would probably be a lot more effective with Penner on the left side.
  

Defensive Pairings

• Ellerby-Doughty, Grade: C. Ellerby played a very tentative and indecisive game early but became more comfortable moving the puck as the game went on. When on ice together they registered 4 defensive zone turnovers, 9 shot attempts against and allowed 2 scoring chances. Not awful numbers, but not world beating. Their match-ups were also softer than the Kings 2nd pairing as they saw most of their time against the Red Wings’ 2nd and 3rd lines.
• Scuderi-Voynov, Grade: B+. Slava Voynov is currently the Kings best defenseman and quite possibly their best overall player. For the first time this season he saw more overall ice time than Doughty and, as has been the trend of late, tougher matchups. The pair was matched exclusively against Detroit’s top 6 and were dominant on both ends of the ice. Voynov was on ice for 14 scoring chances for and only 3 against. Scuderi didn’t have a huge impact as he relied heavily on Voynov to move the puck out and when he didn’t, he turned it over twice. Voynov wasn’t as effecient at moving the puck as usual but the Red Wings spent such little time in the Kings’ end that it hardly mattered.
• Martinez-Drewiske, Grade F. Martinez had 2 good shifts and for the most part was again not much of a factor defensively. He also took a poor penalty in the third. Drewiske led Kings’ defenseman in d-zone turnovers despite having the least amount of ice time.

Power Play

• Grade: B. 5:33 minutes of PP time. 3 shots, 6 scoring chances. A big improvement over last game. If they continue to get this many good looks, pucks will start going in.

Penalty Kill

Numbers

Tables are sortable.

If you’re unfamiliar with shot attempts and scoring chances, check out these links to see why they are important: Corsi – Scoring Chances.

For in-game scoring chance and shot attempt updates: Follow @RobertJftC