2/13 Preview – No Apparent Changes + A Buffalo Bounceback, Kupari’s Play, Bisson Recalled

WHO: Los Angeles Kings (29-18-7) vs. Buffalo Sabres (26-21-4)
WHAT: NHL REGULAR-SEASON GAME
WHEN: Monday, February 13 @ 7:30 PM Pacific
WHERE: Crypto.com Arena – Los Angeles, CA
HOW TO FOLLOW: VIDEO: Bally Sports West – AUDIO – iHeart Radio – TWITTER: @DooleyLAK & @LAKings

TONIGHT’S MATCHUP: Following their return from the All-Star break on Saturday, the Kings are back in action this evening with the Buffalo Sabres in town for the first time this season.

HEAD-TO-HEAD: The Kings did not score in the first meeting of the season against Buffalo, but have won six of their last eight against the Sabres here in Los Angeles. Forward Alex Iafallo has six career points (1-5-6) versus his hometown team.

KINGS VITALS: The Kings practiced yesterday in between games and opted for an optional skate this morning before hosting the Sabres.

Coming off of his first shutout as a member of the Kings on Saturday, goaltender Pheonix Copley was off first this morning and is expected to get the start tonight against the Sabres. Copley has faced Buffalo twice in his NHL career, posting a record of 1-1-0, with a .850 save percentage and a 4.32 goals-against average.

Listed below is a projected lineup, based on practices over the last two days at Toyota Sports Performance Center –

Byfield – Kopitar – Kempe
Moore – Danault – Arvidsson
Fiala – Lizotte – Iafallo
Anderson-Dolan – Kupari – Kaliyev
Lemieux – Vilardi – Grundstrom (R)

Anderson – Doughty
Durzi – Roy
Edler – Walker

Copley
Quick

Based on this morning’s skate, the Kings don’t appear to be making any lineup changes this evening from the way the team looked against Pittsburgh on Saturday. Forwards Brendan Lemieux and Gabe Vilardi were on late, along with Carl Grundstrom in a non-contact jersey, indicating tonight’s scratched players. Vilardi is working his way back from injury and is now in a full-contact jersey, but he was already ruled out from tonight’s game. Today marked Grundstrom’s first practice back with the group, a good sign in his process.

SABRES VITALS: Buffalo enters tonight’s game with three consecutive losses, including a 7-2 defeat against Calgary in its first game coming out of the All-Star break on Saturday.

For the visitors, the expectation is that veteran netminder Craig Anderson will get the start tonight between the pipes. Anderson, who posted a shutout when these teams met in Buffalo back in December, has an all-time record of 6-8-4 against the Kings, with a .898 save percentage and a 3.18 goals-against average.

Per Lance Lysowski of the Buffalo News, here’s how the visitors aligned during their practice yesterday –

Sabres’ lines and pairs at the morning skate:

Skinner-Cozens-Tuch
Mittelstadt-Thompson-Okposo
Asplund-Jost-Olofsson
Girgensons-Krebs-Quinn

Dahlin-Samuelsson
Power-Jokiharju
Clague-Lyubushkin
Extras were Bryson and Peterka

— Lance Lysowski (@LLysowski) February 13, 2023

Buffalo defenseman Kale Clague appears set to square off against his former team this evening. Forward Jeff Skinner has 11 goals from 18 career games played versus Los Angeles, including four from six games since he was acquired by the Sabres.

Notes –
A Buffalo Bounceback
“We’re talking about playing Buffalo. The third period in Buffalo started to turn us a little bit, I thought, and that was a very strange game because I thought we played some of our best hockey for two periods and it just went away. So, there’s a motivating factor in that, finding a way to fix what went wrong in that third period.”

That was Todd McLellan speaking about tonight’s game against the Sabres, a rematch of the largest defeat of the season for the Kings, a 6-0 margin in Western New York back in December.

Of all the games the Kings have played this season, we’ve probably talked with McLellan the most about that Buffalo game. He believes it was a turning point in many ways for a Kings team that was battling inconsistency. They found that stride in the first 40 minutes before conceding six goals in the final 20.

The Kings were, at that point in the season, 15-12-5. Since that game, they’re 14-6-2. That was .547 hockey exiting Buffalo and .681 hockey since. Tonight’s game will still be a tricky one, as the Kings are facing a high-octane offensive team, likely with a point to prove after a disappointing, five-goal defeat coming out of the break. Throw on top of that a playoff race and the Kings know what’s in store.

“They’re tied for the second-highest scoring team in the NHL, so they can score goals and we saw that happen in that period,” McLellan added. “They also, I’m sure, weren’t happy with their initial game against Calgary, so we’ll have a tiger by the tail. All of that should be motivating enough for our group and you throw on top of that the playoff race, importance of points.”

There’s also the notion of coming back off the emotional win on Saturday.

A 6-0 win is a 6-0 win and you take that to the bank. Having that win come on Dustin Brown Night, with a ceremony that the Kings said they fed off of, clearly played a role. Now comes the task of keeping things never too high, never too low in the following game. The players, for their part, are saying the right things.

Pheonix Copley – I think at any point in the season, win or loss, we’ve got to just recollect ourselves and get ready for the next one. They’re all important wins right now. We know what we did well, we know what we can improve on and then we’re on to the next one.

Sean Durzi – Obviously that night, you enjoy it. It was a privlidge to be a part of it, to know Brownie and for him and his family. We enjoyed it as much as we can, take nothing away from that. If we do a good job of just going to the next game, taking it a game at a time, I think we’ll be fine.

Rasmus Kupari – It was a big night, that gave us a boost for the game and we wanted to win that game for [Brown], for us, but I think we want to keep climbing in the standings, be a top team in our division. So, all eyes are on the next game and that’s all that matters. Last game was good, but all that matters is the next game.

On the ice, five hours from this writing, we’ll see how the words translate into performance.

His Passes Were Finnish-ed
Saturday against Pittsburgh was a night that saw the fourth line score on their first shift of the evening. They went on to impact the second goal of the night as well after an overlap of lines, with forward Rasmus Kupari collecting a point on both goals.

Saturday’s game for Kupari was a Top-3 night for him in terms of on-ice scoring chances and high-danger chances for. Individually speaking, his totals weren’t eye-popping, but he collected two assists on an evening that saw the Kings create eight scoring chances and four high-danger chances with him on the ice. The result was two goals for and the first multi-assist game of Kupari’s career.

“It was a little different after the break, with the conditioning, but I felt pretty good, individually and obviously the team played really well,” he said.

After a heads-up play on the first goal to cover for a pinching Sean Walker, Kupari was more directly involved in Alex Iafallo’s goal later in the period. After he got open in the slot, and was denied off of a pass from Kevin Fiala, Kupari tracked down his own rebound and picked his head up to see Alex Iafallo in a pocket of space in the low slot. A spinning pass later and it’s in the net.

“I maybe should have scored on the first chance and then I got my own rebound and saw that Iafallo was there, all by himself,” Kupari explained. “Those kind of plays just come without thinking, I saw he was open and threw the puck there.”

What Kupari’s play, and that of Jaret Anderson-Dolan next to him, has created is internal competition. Back in October, neither player was in the Opening Night lineup. Neither player was established as an every-day guy. Should their play continue at this level, however, it creates difficult decisions for the organization to make as players like Gabe Vilardi and Carl Grundstrom work their way back from injury.

“If that group of players continues to play real well, it’s going to make it hard for people to make decisions,” McLellan added. “Coming out of the break, we talked about that. When everybody is playing at the best of their abilities, that’s a really good sign for our organization but it makes it hard on some decisions……once we do get healthy, the internal competition is really going to get cranked up.”

Biss Nasty
Lastly, Insiders, a small, gameday roster move.

As noted above, the Kings do not appear likely to make any lineup changes this evening from the group that played against Pittsburgh on Saturday. With that in mind, they have opted to recall defenseman Tobie Bisson from AHL-Ontario this afternoon to serve as the seventh defenseman this evening. Since the Kings saw defenseman Alex Edler suffer a warmup injury in Detroit back in October, they’ve typically opted for a game-day recall of an extra defenseman, just to be on the safe side. Bisson likely represents that option for tonight and is the insurance policy this evening.

Also wanted to work in the storyline of how Quinton Byfield has impacted the first line – which he has immensly – but I think that merits more space in an article, so it’ll be a separate story later this week. Kings and Sabres, tonight at 7:30 PM! See you there!