I don’t know……can’t explain it.
One of my favorite underrated scenes in the office. Great acting by B.J. Novak. I thought about it last night, boarding the plane from Montreal to Toronto, coming off yet another road victory for the Los Angeles Kings.
Last season, the Kings were the NHL’s best team at home, winning 31 times from 41 games played. This season, the Kings have won just once on home ice and yet carry a 7-1-2 record on the road, extended last night with perhaps their most emphatic victory of the season, a 5-1 win over red-hot Montreal.
The Kings won playing their way last night. Despite a relatively solid opening period, a goal inside the final minute saw the Canadiens take a 1-0 lead into the break. It didn’t get anybody down, though. The Kings came out like gangbusters, scoring three times in the first 5:22 of the second period. Faceoff execution to perfection for the first one, followed by what I thought were two LA Kings style goals from Quinton Byfield and Kevin Fiala. Both delivered with tenacity, both off of winning pucks back in the offensive zone and getting to the high-danger areas to finish.
It all led to a 2-for-2 start on this trip and the NHL’s second-best road record in the early stages of the regular season. At 7-1-2, no team in the league has collected more points away from home than the Kings have, while their .800 winning percentage trails only the New York Rangers, who have played one fewer game.
All of which to say, the Kings have had way more success on the road than they have at home. So, much be easy to answer, what’s the secret?
“I mean, it’s weird.”
“I haven’t seen us doing anything special.”
“I can’t think of one specific thing.”
Ahhhhhh. Okay.
I’ll probably be repeating what was said quite a bit last season here, but there really isn’t a defined answer to the question.
The Kings have gotten results on the road and they haven’t at home. Last season, the Kings got results at home and they didn’t on the road. It’s stunningly similar, in opposite directions. The Kings aren’t trying harder on the road than they are at home. They aren’t strategizing any differently. They aren’t approaching games one way versus another in different settings.
Forward Alex Laferriere said the mentality is the same throughout, pointing simply to a couple of bounces one way in Los Angeles and a couple in the right direction when playing on the road. Fair play. Might honestly be as simple as that.
But the 2021-22 LA Kings set a franchise record for points on the road. The 2023-24 LA Kings set an NHL record for most consecutive road wins to begin a season. Meanwhile, the 2024-25 LA Kings had the second-worst road record of all 16 playoff teams, alongside what was by far the most successful home campaign in franchise history. All in the span of four seasons.
“Two years ago, same thing, we were hot on the road and last year we’re hot at home and now we’re hot on the road, I guess, again,” forward Quinton Byfield said. “Can’t say anything about that, it’s kind of just how it goes sometimes. Obviously, you want to make it both home and away, get some wins at home, but [for now] we’ve got to finish this roadtrip strong.”
Now, the sample size is pretty small here, but we’re already trending in the direction of another very defined split. It’s been the team’s performance on the road that has carried them out of an early-season slump, generated mostly by results at home.
Again, there isn’t a real rhyme or reason to it. It’s not by choice or the players and coaches trying to do anything different. But it’s there and it’s got to at least be talked about.
Joel Edmundson had one of the best attempts at trying to get across what he feels might be different.
“We’re together 24/7 on the road, sometimes you just get into a rhythm and you love winning on the road, you like to silence the crowd early and we play a simple game,” Edmundson said. “Maybe we’re trying to do too much at home and that’s when other teams feed off that. If I had to choose one thing, that would probably be it, but I’ve just liked our game more on the road this year.”
I think he could be right. Wonder if even last year’s success leads into that a little bit. Coming off of so much success, you’d have to think this would be a team that entered the season feeling really good about themselves at home, as they should. Maybe on the road, where they struggled all of last season, they’ve kept things simple and have gotten results as such. Would at least somewhat stand to reason.
I thought Darcy Kuemper took a decent crack at it as well.
“I think we’re playing complete games on the road right now, being tight and playing more the style we want to on a more consistent basis,” he surmised. “Not that we’re not doing it at home, it’s starting to come, but just the 60-minute efforts seem to be there right now on the road. We just want to keep building our game and then it’ll start translating to both home and road games.”
Style, Consistency and 60-minute efforts.
Three key buzzwords you typically start to hear when a team is beginning to play well. We have seen more of that LA Kings style on the road. Last night in Montreal perhaps the biggest showing there. Same goes for the consistency and the 60 minutes, with the win over the Canadiens being perhaps as close to a full 60 as we’ve seen from the Kings so far this season.
I actually think the recent four-game homestand has crept into this trip a bit as well. Jim Hiller said before the Pittsburgh game that the Kings played their best four-game stretch over those four games in Los Angeles. They didn’t really get rewarded for it, posting a 1-2-1 record, but he maintained that the Kings were doing things better and the results would come. Maybe the change of scenery helped in that area. Maybe it’s just a coincidence. But the results have come over the last 72 hours, in wins over Montreal and Pittsburgh.
Todd McLellan used to say that sometimes, when you’re slumping, you’d see positive signs before you saw results. Same went the other way, that the “sickness” as he phrased it would show up in your game before you started losing. Maybe there’s a little bit of that here.
Hiller felt that in that stretch, the Kings played as they played last season. That he saw positives despite the defeats. Maybe now is the reward for what was done at Crypto.com Arena, that went punished, rather than rewarded.
“Probably the best stretch as far as looking like that’s how we want to play, having the other team feel like the Kings are coming, they’re forechecking, they’re forechecking us, they’re heavy in the o-zone, not giving us much,” he said. “We just hadn’t gotten the results.”
Well, now they are.
And they’ve got to keep that going.
Toronto, Ottawa and Washington to close out the trip. Three teams that made the playoffs last season, like the Kings. Three teams that hadn’t started their 2025-26 seasons the way they wanted to, like the Kings, though all four teams seem to be finding their way, Ottawa in particular. The Kings are 2-0-0 on their current trip and winning even one of those three games guarantees them a winning trip.
As they’re starting to find their groove, though, they should be in search of more than that. They’ve dug themselves, again, out of the hole they put themselves in. Road success has been the primary driver as to why. No better time than what’s ahead to keep that success rolling.
