Playing up/down to competition?

Kings stat guru Jeremy Zager came up with this one yesterday… The Kings have a 15-9-5 record this season against teams currently in the top eight of the Western Conference, and they have a 9-8-3 record against Western Conference teams that are 10th or lower (the Kings are in ninth right now). It might also be interesting to check the Kings’ record against playoff/non-playoff teams at the time the Kings played them, but that would be a tougher task. In any event, the Kings can’t afford to follow up their solid victory over fifth-place Nashville with a clunker against 15th-place Columbus, even though the Blue Jackets have looked strong of late, with three consecutive victories.

Jonathan Bernier remains on track to get the start in goal tonight. Jonathan Quick started the first three games against the Blue Jackets and went 2-1-0, all of which were low-scoring games.

Rules for Blog Commenting

No profanity, slurs or other offensive language. Replacing letters with symbols does not turn expletives into non-expletives.
Personal attacks against other blog commenters, and/or blatant attempts to antagonize other comments, are not tolerated. Respectful disagreement is encouraged. Posts that continually express the same singular opinion will be deleted.
Comments that incite political, religious or similar debates will be deleted.
Please do not discuss, or post links to websites that illegally stream NHL games.
Posting under multiple user names is not allowed. Do not type in all caps. All violations are subject to comment deletion and/or banning of commenters, per the discretion of the blog administrator.

Repeated violations of the blog rules will result in site bans, commensurate with the nature and number of offenses.

Please flag any comments that violate the site rules for moderation. For immediate problems regarding problematic posts, please email zdooley@lakings.com.