NHL Betting Guide

The Los Angeles Kings are another one of those teams that has surprised the NHL this year.  They were not expected to do very well in the NHL Western Conference, but have shown that they can pull things together and win some games.  They were seen as a team to finish near the bottom of the conference, yet find themselves with an impressive 40-23-5 record at this point in the season.

Anze Kopitar has been great for the Kings so far this year.  In just 68 games he has put up 71 points on the season, which puts him on track to chalk up career highs in a variety of categories on the season.

Johnathan Quick is another key to the success of this team in the postseason. He has been a decent goaltender all year, putting up an impressive 37 wins so far this year, but he has not shown the same dominance as many of the top goaltenders in the league. He is just a third year player and has already had more shutouts this season then he did last year.  The impressive part is that he has played in fewer games this year than he did the last, so it shows some incredible improvement.

The Kings have done a great job of keeping teams from getting a lot of shots on the net.  They have been great at this all season and have allowed Quick to post decent goals against numbers (2.49) without having an incredible save percentage (.909).

As far as the playoffs are concerned, they need to tighten their defense and help the goalie out.  Without that, they are going to have to rely a lot on the goal keeper to keep things alive in the playoffs.  The Kings will live and die by Johnathan Quick this postseason.