LA Kings one win from Stanley Cup after shutting out unlucky Rangers

The question following the first two games of the Stanley Cup final was simply this: are the LA Kings very good or just very lucky? The Kings managed two consecutive come-from-behind wins on home ice, each one in a similar manner (down 2-0 after the first period, the Kings came back to eventually win them both in overtime), while never having actually led at any point in either contest. Should they win the Cup, it might become the stuff of legend. Going into game three in New York City, it was just confounding.

Unfortunately, despite a clearer result on laid out on the scoresheet, Monday night put us no closer to a definitive answer. The Kings won again, this time 3-0 in regulation to take a similarly daunting 3-0 lead in the series, but it was the way in which they did it that could leave one still befuddled.

It started with the first goal. The Rangers were consistent in the first period, and though they didn’t get a goal out of it, the period gave the home crowd something to be hopeful about (again). That is to say, most of the first period – so much of the first period, in fact, there was speculation their success lasted the entire period. But, as the replay showed, it was not.

Jeff Carter’s puck passed the line with approximately 0.07 seconds left in the first, delivering a devastating blow to New York. It was a show of pure talent, no doubt, that Carter goal. But the timing? Maybe a bit lucky. But just over four minutes into the second period, the Kings didn’t need it. With the man advantage, Anze Kopitar fed it out to Jake Muzzin on the point. You can guess the rest.

Now, taking only the first two games into consideration, you’d be forgiven for assuming that a two-goal lead means nothing in this series, and that such things are erased quickly and easily to create nail-biting endings. And you’d almost be right. Two-goal leads are only meaningless in this series when the Rangers have them.

So, to recap: Mike Richards looked for the pass on a two-on-one, and instead of allowing that puck to travel across the ice and maybe (maybe not) connect with Trevor Lewis, it bounced back off a Ranger skate, back to Richards’ stick, and he put it away to make it 3-0. What do you call that sequence of events? Skill? Luck?

Perhaps the answer is both. Even had it not even been for the apparent luck in spots for the Kings, they were simply the better team. The Kings were 25% on their power play, capitalizing once on four chances. The Rangers went 0-for-six. The Rangers gave away the puck 11 times; the Kings did it seven. But not everything was bad on the Ranger side. They outshot the Kings by a wide margin – 32 to 15! And had they had any of the right luck, no doubt some of those would have made it in … or, perhaps, had the Kings not had the right skills.

The NHL is on the cusp, it seems, of becoming a sport that adopts analytics wholeheartedly. And yet, as it sometimes is with stats, they don’t hold. Take our old (new?) friend the Fenwick chart. Were it in charge of tonight’s proceedings, the Rangers would have walked away happy, and the city of New York would have had a reason to celebrate into Tuesday morning. Needless to say, that Fenwick chart must be awfully frustrated with some guy between the pipes in the LA end named Jonathan Quick right about now.

He stopped Mats Zuccarello like this. And then Derick Brassard like this.

Lucky? Maybe. More likely it’s skill. And while neither might seem a desirable opponent which to rally against from such a deficit, perhaps it’s better that it’s the latter. At least you can explain being beaten by skill.

Game four goes Wednesday night at MSG, 8pm ET.