10/17 Preview – Full Morning Skate Today + McLellan on Offense/Defense, Zone Entries & detROYt

WHO: Los Angeles Kings (1-2-0) @ Detroit Red Wings (2-0-0)
WHAT: NHL REGULAR SEASON GAME
WHEN: Monday, October 17 @ 4:00 PM Pacific
WHERE: Little Caesars Arena – Detroit, Michigan
HOW TO FOLLOW: VIDEO: Bally Sports West – AUDIO – iHeart Radio – TWITTER: @DooleyLAK & @LAKings

TONIGHT’S MATCHUP: The first road trip of the season continues, as the Kings visit Detroit to take on the Red Wings in game two of five in total.

HEAD-TO-HEAD: The Kings won both meetings against the Red Wings last season, including a 5-3 victory here in Detroit. Forwards Phillip Danault (3-0-3) and Trevor Moore (1-2-3) led the Kings in scoring versus the Red Wings last season, with Moore also posting a +4 rating. Moore has five points (2-3-5) from five career games against Detroit.

KINGS VITALS: Line rushes from this morning indicate one potential change for the Kings, as well as a change in goal. Below is how the Kings lined up, based off of today’s morning skate –

Kevin Fiala – Anze Kopitar – Adrian Kempe
Trevor Moore – Phillip Danault – Viktor Arvidsson
Alex Iafallo – Quinton Byfield – Gabe Vilardi
Brendan Lemieux – Blake Lizotte – Carl Grundstrom

Mikey Anderson – Drew Doughty
Sean Durzi – Matt Roy
Alex Edler – Brandt Clarke

Jonathan Quick
Cal Petersen

Goaltender Jonathan Quick was the first goaltender off this morning, a good sign that he will make his third start of the season and his first away from home. All-time, Quick is 12-14-1 against the Red Wings, with a .906 save percentage and a 2.74 goals-against average.

With no team practice yesterday, on an off day in Detroit, we saw our first full morning skate of the season for the Kings here today. Line rushes indicate that we could see one change to the group that played against Minnesota, with Carl Grundstrom in Arthur Kaliyev’s spot. It’s not a guarantee, but Kaliyev is fully available, per Todd McLellan. What appeared likely in morning skate in Minnesota wasn’t exactly the case when warmups rolled around in Minnesota, so we’ll see if that’s the same here again today.

RED WINGS VITALS: Coming off of a back-to-back to open the season, the Red Wings also did not hold a team practice yesterday and returned for a full-team morning skate earlier today.

Goaltender Ville Husso, acquired by Detroit this offseason, was the first goaltender off this morning for the Red Wings, signaling that he will make his second start of the season this evening. Throughout his NHL career, Husso is 2-1-0 versus the Kings, with a .929 save percentage and a 2.38 goals-against average.

Per Ansar Khan of MLive.com, here’s how the Red Wings lined up this morning –

#RedWings lines this morning:
Kubalik-Larkin-Raymond
Zadina-Copp-Perron
Soderblom-Rasmussen-Sundqvist
Erne-Veleno-Suter
Chiarot-Seider
Maatta-Hronek
Hagg-Lindstrom
Husso in starter’s net. pic.twitter.com/MqQS5LAbZO

— Ansar Khan (@AnsarKhanMLive) October 17, 2022

Expected to feature this evening is former Kings defenseman Olli Maatta, who signed with Detroit as a free agent, after he spent the last two seasons in Los Angeles. Forwards Tyler Bertuzzi and Jakob Vrana did not participate in morning skate today for the Red Wings. Bertuzzi was ruled out for 4-6 weeks with an upper-body injury, while Vrana will miss tonight’s game for personal reasons.

One Side Up, One Side Down
More likely than not, we won’t see a ton of 7-6 games this season. It takes a lot of factors happening together for a veteran coach like Todd McLellan to call a game “strange” and “hard to explain”, but that’s what we saw after Saturday’s win over the Wild.

The offensive side of the game is naturally what was positive. It’s the other side, the defensive side of the game and the goals against, that the Kings would want to see change or improve. McLellan touched on both this morning –

Offensive – Those are the positives in the game, the offensive part. The ability to strike back right after being scored on and take the momentum away, I thought the powerplay looked dangerous, we moved the puck around and it had multiple looks at the net that were different each time, it wasn’t nearly as predictable. We had some nice entries that we were able to score off of and that has to be a trait of our team. So, a lot of good things offensively, I’m not overly concerned about that part of the game. I haven’t been all year and it’s been the other end.”

Defensive – Everybody plays a role in it, the crease, the defensemen, the forwards, but I think the area we’ve been affected by most has been our parade to the penalty box. We put ourselves in a situation where we had to kill six penalties in the last two periods when we’re leading a game. When we do that, we don’t find rhythm, we don’t use everybody, your mindset changes from a balanced game to one where you’re defending all the time, you’re having to sell out and block shots. There are a lot of things we need to fix, but if we could put our finger on one thing, that would be it.

In speaking with a few different players over the last few days, there has certainly been some chatter about the improved power play, specifically with the puck movement and diversity of looks, as well as the team’s ability to score of the rush, detailed further below. There’s also the knowledge that things need to tighten up defensively as well and that’s what the Kings will look for here in Detroit.

Rush Hour 2
Saturday’s win over Minnesota, to me at least, saw a notable output for the Kings off the rush, with zone entries at the forefront of the success. I didn’t necessarily have the Kings as an off-the-rush dynamo last season, which might have made Rush Hour (1) the better title here, but Todd McLellan saw at least an element of that production as a carryover from last season, hence the deuce.

There might just be something to that. As he pointed out, the Kings have been one of the league’s best when it came to offensive zone-entry stats, dating back to last season.

“I think you saw some of it last year,” McLellan said this morning. “It’s just hard to put all the years together because they were they’ve been estranged themselves with COVID, but our entry stats from an analytical standpoint have improved. They can still get better, but they’ve improved and we want to continue to grow that.”

Last season, per The Athletic, the Kings had two forwards – Adrian Kempe and Viktor Arvidsson – in the league’s Top 50 in controlled zone entries per/60. Trevor Moore was just outside of that list and the Kings added forward Kevin Fiala in the offseason, who ranked 14th.

Carrying into the zone is one thing, but turning that possession into offense is another. Adrian Kempe’s game-opening goal was certainly an example of a goal off the rush. You could maybe classify Gabe Vilardi’s in that boat, as an odd-man rush situation, but it was off of a turnover forced by Quinton Byfield in the offensive zone, rather than transporting the puck into the attacking end. Kempe’s second goal came off of a controlled entry, as Kempe hit Anze Kopitar in stride to gain the offensive blue line, but wasn’t necessarily a rush chance either.

Three goals with rush elements, even if not true “rush goals”. Kempe and Fiala touched on their own line after the win over Minnesota, but Iafallo and Vilardi chimed in more today with their own approach. Iafallo highlighted the importance that offense off the rush will have for the Kings.

“Getting those rush chances and driving the net is going to help us win games,” Alex Iafallo, who had the primary assist on Vilardi’s goal, said. “Scoring off the rush is going to be huge, getting shots off of those, not missing any passes and staying consistent there and we’ll be fine.”

Vilardi went his own route, but still saw the importance. He pointed to the way the Kings play in the neutral zone, the step before the rushes, as an area of emphasis that should lead to the Kings being able to generate attacking opportunities. A strong neutral zone, combined with the speed the Kings have up front, should be an effective combination.

“We’ve got a lot of fast guys on this team, we play the 1-3-1 and create turnovers in the neutral zone and go from the other way, right away,” Vilardi added. “That’s something for sure. We’ve got Kevin [Fiala] now and he’s nasty off the rush. It’s something I think we can continue to do and catch teams off with.”

Hopefully the start of things to come for the Kings as they continue to find their stride here this season.

detROYt
It’s not his Detroit debut, but it’s still a special night for Matt Roy whenever he has the opportunity to play in his home state. Roy missed out on the chance to do so last year, as he was placed in COVID Protocol two games before the Kings came to Detroit, missing the final game before the All-Star break.

No such unfortunate timing this year, as Roy will get the chance to play at Little Caesars Arena tonight.

“It was a bummer last year,” he said. “I think the first time was the most special, now it’s just a little bit more excitement and a little bit more energy.”

He figures he’ll have “a lot” of people in attendance here tonight to form the Matt Roy supporters section, in what will be his second NHL game here in Detroit. He estimated the total at potentially over 100 between friends and family from the area.

“It’s great, it’s obviously fun to play the Wings, and to be here, but it’s more special just to see my family, seeing how excited they get,” he added of the trip to Michigan. “I’ve had a lot of friends reach out to them and they get super excited, which makes me excited. It’s kind of come back full circle.”

Roy is a native of Canton, MI, a Detroit suberb that is just over a half hour drive in. With a full team off day on Sunday, Roy had the opportunity to head home and spend the day with his parents, enjoy a home cooked meal and watch some football at home. When playing with Ontario in the AHL, he had a slightly smaller group of around 20-30 in attendance in Grand Rapids, an arena he also played in during tournament play in college with Michigan Tech.

Now, Roy will play in front of his group tonight in Detroit, a special night even if it’s not the first time he’s done so, as was the case with Mikey Anderson and Blake Lizotte on Saturday in Minnesota.

Kings and Red Wings, tonight at 4 PM Pacific!