Personnel changes for power play?

The Kings didn’t make any more shake-ups to their roster today, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be any in-team tweaking, particularly on the power play. The Kings went 2-for-3 on the man advantage on Saturday against Chicago, but it really wasn’t because of anything in their structure. They were bang-bang plays — a Stoll-to-Brown goal on the rush, followed by a Brown rebound of Alec Martinez’s quick point shot — things the Kings would like to see more of from the power play. Darryl Sutter also hinted at personnel changes, after the departure of Jack Johnson and the arrival of Jeff Carter, and hinted that Slava Voynov might replace Drew Doughty on the first power-play unit.

SUTTER: “When you’re a low-scoring team — and this is dead-on true — and you pretty much always stick to the same guys on the power play, it becomes a little bit like they’re getting their power-play time irregardless of how they do. The two goals we scored the other night weren’t from the traditional guys on it. It’s moving Brownie down to another unit, and then moving other guys. I think Voynov is going to put some pressure on Doughty in those situations. We’ve been experimenting with Mike (Richards) on the point. We’ll continue to do that, because he’s been successful in the past at it. Hopefully it gives us some different looks. It’s just like asking, after that game in Phoenix, what was wrong with our penalty killing. Well, they weren’t traditional goals that they scored. They were coverage goals. Every game, it’s just those little things that are so fine now.”

No matter what, the power play will continue to include a role for Carter, who tonight will play his second game with the Kings. Sutter was asked for his opinion on Carter’s Kings debut.

SUTTER: “I thought he was solid. I didn’t want to use him that much killing penalties, because I knew he was going to run out of gas, but as it turned out, a lot of our penalty killers were in the penalty box, so I was having to use him more.”