Waking up with the Kings: October 15

Baby steps. After the overtime loss to Arizona and the win over Winnipeg, Darryl Sutter spoke about having taken “steps” in an effort to reach an appropriate early season level for a team coming off a third consecutive playoff run that ended in June. Did Los Angeles take a step in a 6-1 win on Tuesday over an Edmonton team that scratched Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Jordan Eberle and Jeff Petry, and started two defensemen who entered the game with a combined five games of NHL experience? Sure, why not. Of course, as any rational fan will tell you, don’t recalibrate expectations for any particular players or the collective group based on a 6-1 romp over Edmonton in October. The Kings are Good; the Oilers are Not Good. St. Louis visits on Thursday. Let’s talk then.

But oh, That 70’s Line. On the podcast this week, we discussed when it is appropriate/not appropriate to bestow a nickname upon a line. The Kings won the Cup, Pearson/Carter/Toffoli wreaked havoc on the Blackhawks, and there’s a witty reference to a 1990’s FOX show that wasn’t awful. This group passes the test. Also: their forechecking and work around the boards is awfully impressive and overwhelmed the Oilers for much of the night. For the second time in three games, Tanner Pearson used a stick lift to strip an opponent of the puck before wristing it past the opposing goalie. It’s representative of the line’s success as a whole; these are players who are responsible around all corners of the ice and aren’t just offensive zone dynamos. The Kings have an extreme wealth of players capable of killing penalties, and Tyler Toffoli is one of them. I had predicted on the podcast last week that Toffoli was going to get at least one shorty this season – he led all AHL rookies with three in his 2012-13 rookie of the year campaign – and his patience and poise carrying the puck into the offensive zone before pulling it back as if it were a yo-yo around the outstretched reach of Brad Hunt before firing off a snipe past Viktor Fasth into the near-side corner will finish the year towards the top of his annual highlight reel. So: 16 points and a plus-22 rating over the last three games for the trio, which contains a three-game goal streak for Pearson and Carter and a three-game point streak for Toffoli.

As would be expected in a game between a pair of teams that were separated by five goals after 25 minutes and 29 seconds, ice time was divvied up as evenly as we’ll most likely see for the entire season. No one played more than 22:53 (Voynov), no one played less than 12:16 (Andreoff), and as for even strength ice time, all forwards finished between 10:45 (Toffoli) and 13:28 (Richards). For a team finishing up the final game of three games in four nights, that’s some much needed line rollin’.