After a brief scare thanks to a super-hot run by the rival Anaheim Ducks, the Los Angeles Kings are back on top of the Pacific Division, and looking quite comfortable once again.

This, too, is a team accustomed to going on runs. This year they've had winning streaks of seven, six, and five games, but also gone through stretches where they lost four of five, five of seven, and five of nine. In short, it's a team that can quickly go from looking unbeatable to looking awful, and it's not often that they spend much time in between.

Since Feb. 20, a little more than a week before the trade deadline, the Kings are 9-2-1, which is obviously fantastic and the reason they're back atop the division. During that time, they have the third-best possession numbers in the league (54.7 percent percent, actually a little down from their season average) and have gotten world-class goaltending from Jonathan Quick (a ludicrous .958 at 5-on-5).

And that, you'd have to say, is why the Kings are having so much success right now. Going .958 over a 12-game run is stretching the boundaries of credulity. That's not just unsustainable. He would have to get appreciably worse to have his numbers drop just to a normal level of unsustainability. He's been on runs like this before, but they have been very, very brief, and are usually followed by some career lows.

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The thing with the Kings is that they have typically always beaten teams on volume, which is a good idea because there's generally less luck involved as a result. Their historical ability to drive shot attempts, scoring chances, and so on is well above the talents of any other teams. But this comes at the expense of their ability to get to “quality” shooting areas as regularly as their opponents might. While the Kings are traditionally near the very top of the league in possession numbers, their scoring-chance numbers are usually a little bit lower than that. They're still dominant in terms of both overall and high-quality chances, but less so than the other numbers might suggest.

Since Dec. 22, 2011, when Darryl Sutter took over and the Kings became a juggernaut, the team has a score-adjusted corsi percentage of 55.9, ahead of Chicago and Boston by 2.0 and 2.9 points, respectively. During that time, they have the second-lowest shooting percentage in the league (just 7.1 percent at 5-on-5) and the second-highest save percentage (.929). So clearly, something is happening in close to the net on both ends of the ice that depresses goalscoring. Part of that is team talent (i.e., Quick is an above-average goaltender playing behind a well-above-average defensive team), part of it is systemic.

But as it relates to this year, it seems things have gotten a little extreme. The possession numbers are holding steady at that familiar old elite level. High-danger chances have been a little more up and down but, as you might expect, generally pretty strong. The share of goals they're scoring, though, has fluctuated wildly.

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So the question is, why? Obviously as long as they're controlling the tempo and hanging onto the puck. All things being equal, you wouldn't expect to see a team go from a goals-for percentage of 40 and then a month later be up around 70, especially as the team's share of high-quality chances dipped briefly below the break-even point.

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