Luck and Shooting Accuracy in Los Angeles LOS ANGELES - One of the great mysteries of the 2012 playoffs is how the Kings suddenly transformed from a mediocre team that barely made the playoffs to the juggernaut they have been in the postseason. Even after losing two straight games for the first time this spring, courtesy of the revivified Devils in the Cup finals, they are still 15-4 in the postseason. Contrast that impressive record with the Kings" regular-season mark: 40 wins in regulation, overtime and shootouts; and 42 defeats in regulation, overtime and shootouts. That's an eyelash under .500. It has been widely observed that big things were predicted of the Kings before the season started, with Mike Richards added to the team's cast alongside Anze Kopitar, Dustin Brown, Drew Doughty and others. However, they underachieved so drastically that it cost the coach, Terry Murray, his job in December. Why, then, did the Kings lose so often during the regular season, and why are they winning so often in the playoffs? The answer, it turns out, is tied in part to their shooting efficiency and simple mathematical probability. During the regular season, the Kings scored on only 6.4 percent of their shots on goal while skating five on five - the lowest even-strength shooting percentage in the N.H.L. In comparison, the median teams, Buffalo and Edmonton, struck on 8.3 percent of their five-on-five shots, and the best team in shooting percentage, Tampa Bay, scored on 9.9 percent. See this chart at behindthenet.ca, which renders the Kings" shooting percentage at "936" under the heading "5v5 Sh%," which actually stands for opposition goalies" save percentage. What does 1.9 percentage points below the N.H.L. median mean over the course of an 82-game season? Quite a bit, as it happens - 38 goals. The Kings were taking 30.7 shots per game while skating five on five in the regular season. Scoring on 6.4 percent of them translated to an average of 2.0 even-strength goals per 60 minutes. Had they been striking at the median rate, they would have scored not quite 2.5 goals per 60 minutes, or 38 additional goals over the course of the season. That's a lot of goals, and probably a fair number of extra victories and regulation ties - worth somewhere in the vicinity of 10 to 19 points. That would have made the Kings not a mediocre 95-point eighth seed, but one of the top three teams in the Western Conference, somewhere next to the 111-point Canucks or the 109-point Blues. Their excellence in the playoffs would have come as no surprise - and indeed, the Kings are striking on 9.3 percent of their postseason shots while skating five on five. That's the third-best shooting percentage among the 16 playoff teams, and much better than the median even-strength strike rate of 6.5 percent. One might say that as unlucky as the Kings were in their regular-season shooting, they have been quite lucky in their playoff shooting. Now, some will object that a low shooting percentage is itself a sign of incompetence, and a high shooting percentage a sign of extra competence. But advanced hockey statisticians say no, shooting percentage is mainly a matter of probability. All teams, they say, eventually trend toward the median shooting percentage, which in recent seasons has hovered around 8.5 percent at five on five and 9 percent for all manpower situations. For detailed discussion from advanced-hockey-stat types, try this link and this one as well. None of this, of course, can predict what will happen in Game 6 of the Kings-Devils championship series or, if necessary, Game 7. But at least we'll have a little better idea why the Kings are here.