Blake, Stevens on board with re-tooling Kings' analytical approach

Rob Blake and John Stevens will leave no stone unturned in their quest to return the Los Angeles Kings to contention.

After missing the playoffs in two of the past three seasons, the Kings opted to clean house by letting go of Stanley Cup architects Dean Lombardi and Darryl Sutter, and the newly appointed duo of Blake and Stevens aim to continue, as well as adjust, Los Angeles' strong directive toward analytics.

Since the 2011-12 season - which ended with the Kings winning their first title - Los Angeles owns the NHL's best Corsi-for percentage (55.7 percent). Despite leading the league in that category again this season, the Kings couldn't score.

Blake mentioned he and Stevens looked at the location of the Kings shots rather than volume, and how the club generates shots off the rush and in the slot.

"We've been at the bottom of the league in that statistically throughout the last season here, so there needs to be an emphasis and a detail on the change in that aspect," Blake told Kings Insider Jon Rosen.

"We were at the bottom of controlled entry, goals off controlled entry. We were near the bottom at getting the puck to the slot whether we were skating it or passing it so there were a lot of things that, the way goals are being scored now, that we weren't having success in."

Jeff Carter and Tanner Pearson were the only Kings to score more than 20 goals this season, and Los Angeles as a whole ranked 25th in goals for (199) and dead last in team shooting percentage at five on five (6.26 percent).

While all stats will be looked at diligently by the Kings' new regime, analytics won't be the be all end all.

"Yeah, and there's a lot of things, but you've got to be careful," Stevens said. "Like sometimes, is it a high volume number, or is it a percentage number? And some team might have a bad percentage, but the volume's high, so you've go to make sure you know what you're looking at and some of it is dictated by style of play."