Why must it be the Kings.

The Vancouver Canucks dropped a 6-3 decision to the LA Kings at Crypto.com Arena in what can only be described as frustrating fashion. The first 5 minutes of the game were all Kings, in which they capitalized twice. After that, the Canucks turned it on, applying pressure and getting good opportunities to score. But each time they managed to bring the game within reach, it would slip back out, and though Vancouver didn’t ever look out of this game, it always felt like they were chasing the result.

Here’s the loss, by the numbers.

As always, you can find our glossary guide of advanced stats here.

Two power play markers helped put the Kings into the driver’s seat of the game. Being masters of slowing down the game and holding these leads, it marked yet another challenge for the Canucks to overcome. The metrics of the first period were decently in favour of Vancouver, leading with 61.29 CF% and 59.07 xGF%. While the second period saw similar shares for the Canucks, giving up two goals against the Kings when they barely sniffed the offensive zone was a bit back-breaking. Then, on the power play to close out the period, Vancouver got plenty of sniffs but were not able to make any of them count. The third period saw the Canucks ramp up the pressure, but unfortunately, they couldn’t keep LA off the scoreboard either.

The heat map from last night paints the picture of a Vancouver team that wildly out-chanced LA. In total, the scoring chances stood at 37-17 for the Canucks with a further 20-8 advantage. It shouldn’t have even been close – and yet, the scoreline heavily favours the Kings. Vancouver did pretty much everything right except score more, getting their fair share of high-quality chances only to not finish them. On the other hand, the Kings were able to take a 2.23 total expected goals for and transform that into 6 goals. Not ideal, to say the least.

Corsi Champ: JT Miller led the Canucks with a 76.00 CF% even with Philip Danault sicced on him. That should say something about the effort that he turned in, posting the fourth-best xGA (0.35) and xGF% (69.86). Miller was on ice for a 9-2 scoring chance differential, but only 4 of those scoring chances were tallied as high-danger. That would probably be the only knocking point of his performance from last night, unable to generate more high-danger chances to help boost the Canucks offence. Other than that, it was a tidy effort from Miller, picking up an important assist on the 4-2 Dakota Joshua goal.

Corsi Chump: Carson Soucy did not have a good game. Recording the team’s worst CF% of 32.14, the defenceman looked slow against the Kings. Getting torched by Fiala and then not clearing the puck away from the net was not a good look. Soucy was on ice for the second-worst xGA of 0.82, and was present for 4 high-danger chances against. Essentially, LA got half of their best opportunities while Soucy was playing against them.

xGF: On the other hand from the back end, Ian Cole turned in a solid effort to lead the Canucks with a 76.70 xGF%. This came with a team-high 1.51 xGF, with the next best player on the Canucks’ roster being Nikita Zadorov’s 0.99. Cole saw a 12-4 scoring chance differential while holding an 8-1 high-danger chance advantage, comfortably the team’s leading man for both categories. Not a bad bounce-back game from him after a rough outing in Arizona.

GSAx: Oof. Casey DeSmith turned into a pumpkin last night, posting a -3.77 GSAx against the Kings’ 2.23 xGF. When your goalie is posting a 0.793 SV%, it’s going to be a challenge to win hockey games no matter how potent your offence is – and the Canucks offence wasn’t exactly clinical last night either. DeSmith gave up 2 high-danger goals, 3 middle-danger goals, and 1 low-danger goal. The bigger thing was the fact that each of these goals were just backbreakers. Vancouver would get some momentum, get a great chance that they would miss – then LA would just come the other way and score. Not a great performance from DeSmith, especially with Arturs Silovs nipping at his heels.

Live by PDO, die by PDO. Vancouver probably deserved better out of this one given the chances that they got, being able to generally outplay the Kings’ 1-3-1 trap hockey. The only problem is that they didn’t bury and their goalie couldn’t get them a save on the back end, resulting in a 6-3 scoreline that makes the game look a lot worse than it probably was. The Canucks are still struggling to find a groove with Thatcher Demko out, with power play spluttering still and their scoring drying up. Time is running out to figure it out before the postseason arrives.

Vancouver returns home to host the Vegas Golden Knights on Monday night.