Forget the details, Kings just need wins

Reminding the media that the second half “started three weeks ago,” Jonathan Quick had only one thing on his mind on Tuesday: picking up two points against the Chicago Blackhawks in the club’s first game after the All-Star Break.

“It’s just we have a good chance to get two points tomorrow,” he said. “You’re not really looking at it as post-break, pre-break. We’ve got a game tomorrow, we’re trying to get two points.”

It was a point that he hammered home. The Kings, one point out of a playoff spot, need wins. They won their first seven games out of the Olympic break last season, but last year was last year and this year there are new sets of challenges and circumstances.

“You’re not trying to compare year-to-year or anything like that,” he said. “I’ve said it four times, we’ve got a game tomorrow and two points are available against a really good hockey team playing at home. We’ve got a lot of stuff to prepare for tomorrow. That’s where the focus is. I’m not trying to look back last year, the year before, the year before that. We’re just trying to win a hockey game tomorrow.”

While the Kings are looking to break a 2-3-5 stretch that has seen them irregularly collecting points – or, perhaps, regularly collecting points for overtime and shootout losses – the Blackhawks, Los Angeles’ 2013 and 2014 Western Conference Final dance partners, are looking for a spark in their post-All-Star Break play, as well.

Chicago won the teams’ only meeting this season, a 4-1 win at Staples Center on November 29. The Kings and Blackhawks will conclude the season series at the United Center on March 30.

“They’re always fun games,” Jeff Carter said. “We know that every time that we face them, we’re in for a tough night. We look at other teams around the league, they’re one of the teams that we try to match up against. In the end, I think Darryl says, it usually runs through Chicago. They’re exciting games. We get up for them and it should be good.”

Darryl Sutter’s park-and-ride approach will have the Kings focused only on the Blackhawks, and not on pre-break opportunities to collect points or the five-game road trip that follows Wednesday’s home game.

“First and foremost, we need to win games,” Robyn Regehr said. “It doesn’t matter who we’re playing or where we’re playing them, anything like that. We need to put together some really good hockey. All of us can play better and this team can do more and that’s what we’re focusing really on. We’re not getting too carried away with the opposition or the circumstances or anything like that.”

While the team’s puck possession efforts have reliably emerged, other aspects have dropped off as the team has strived to implement consistency in its all-around efforts. The Kings lead the league with a 57.8% Corsi-for rating in five-on-five play over the last 23 games, though over that span they’ve been outscored 65-64, excluding shootout goals. Jonathan Quick and Martin Jones have combined to stop 474 of 537 shots over those 23 games for an .883 save percentage.

That the Kings have had personnel challenges on the blue line – Willie Mitchell signed in Florida, Slava Voynov has been suspended indefinitely by the NHL, and the Kings have lost Jake Muzzin, Alec Martinez and Robyn Regehr at times to injury – didn’t matter to Quick.

“I think the defense is playing great. I wouldn’t say that they’re not as good,” he said, before taking umbrage at a suggestion that the team isn’t “ranked” as well defensively.

“Rankings are for fantasy owners and [stuff] like that,” he said.

“Like I said, we’ve got a game tomorrow. We’re trying to get two points.”

Dustin Brown, on whether teams have zeroed in on the Kings (from Monday):
We’ve been successful for two out of three years. So there are a lot of teams that have probably copied the way we played or done certain things. It’s pretty fair to say that our strength is right up the middle, goaltender and defensemen. But I think they’re making it really hard on our centermen. That’s something, as our center, they’re going to have to figure out how to deal with that pressure. They’ve done a really good job of adapting. That’s what good teams do, they find a way to adapt and sometimes it’s a process. But it is what it is, we’ve got to find ways to win games.

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