Analytics with Alison: Benefiting from the Back-to-Back

Often, if you ask an NHL head coach how they are preparing for their opponent on any given night they will tell you they are primarily focused on their team. And that's not wrong. While there is surely prep work for each game, the demands of an 82-game season necessitate that you focus first on shoring up how your team plays and that it aligns with your systems to hopefully push for success.

But every once in a while, the hockey schedule gods smile on us, and a little mini-series of games occur where two teams face off a couple times in a row or in dates close together. In these instances, you get a taste of tailoring your attack to an opponent you're seeing multiple times in a row. Monday's game against the Kings is just one example. Seattle and L.A. will face off again after playing against one another just 48 hours before.
So, what can the Kraken learn from Saturday's game and are there signs they can play more effectively against Los Angeles?
Let's dig in.
Let's start with how Los Angeles likes to play. Defense is their strength. They are top five in the league in terms of stifling shot attempts, shots on net, slot passes, rush chances, cycle chances and rebound chances (per Sportlogiq).
These are all things Dave Hakstol commented on being impactful in his postgame comments Saturday.
"(The Kings are) hard to play against," Hakstol said. "They don't allow any inside ice very easily. You have to work for your inside possession."
So much of this hinges on the Kings' 1-3-1 defensive system, which makes the trip through the neutral zone perilous because opponents can't get through the three-player alignment that Los Angeles presents in the neutral zone. There's a good explainer of this system

. If you'd like to dig into a more Kings-specific outline of how this system works, there's a great piece from Frozen Royalty
HERE
.
But basically, the whole point is that Los Angeles makes it really hard to get through the neutral zone, so getting to the offensive zone for any chance at all is a challenge.
To bring this point home, let's look at where the Kings allow offense against from, according to HockeyViz.com. (Blue indicates area of the ice where shots come at a rate below league average and red indicates where shots occur at a rate higher than league average).

We see that very little offense against is allowed unless you find your way past that clogged neutral zone and top of the offensive zone where the 1-3-1 lingers.
To that end, the Kraken were quiet offensively in the first period. Let's look at where their shot attempts came from.

In the first 20 minutes, the Kraken fell prey to the exact way the Kings like to defend. The Kraken got nowhere near the most dangerous areas of the ice and were not generating a lot offensively.
In period one the Kraken had just one slot shot on net, one odd-man rush, nine controlled entries and 1:08 of offensive zone possession time.
"We were staring at five guys too often," Hakstol said. "We were looking at the 1-3-1 too much… We were going too slow."
But then the Kraken started to figure some things out. Fueled primarily by Yanni Gourde's line helping to establish more momentum, Seattle had one of their characteristically strong second periods in terms of possession and started to break through to the dangerous areas of the ice and get shots off.
In the middle frame, Seattle had four slot shots, one additional odd-man rush, fourteen controlled entries and 2:53 of offensive zone possession time.
Here's what the shot map looked like that frame.

The Kraken weren't able to keep the Kings from scoring late in that frame but felt much better about their ability to control play. Something that continued into period three when Seattle had five slot shots on net, 10 zone entries with control and 2:09 of offensive zone possession time.

The Kraken weren't able to get enough goals on the board to beat the Kings, but they did seem to start to figure out how to play against the vaunted 1-3-1 defense that L.A. deploys so well.
There is more to do if the Kraken want to win Monday, of course. As we accounted for above, there were just two rush chances for Seattle in the game and Hakstol would like to see more of those for his team. And in their own zone, the Kraken will need to defend and not give up the inside ice for chances like the one that led to the first goal against.
But, in a situation where the team started to figure out how to battle an opponent, another 60 minutes against the same team might provide opportunity to jump right back into a style of play that can lead to more success.