Practice 2/27 – Player Updates + Today’s Alignment, Good To Practice, McLellan on Balance

Good Afternoon from Winnipeg!

The LA Kings took the ice this morning for a quick twirl before they lace ’em up tomorrow evening against the Jets. The Kings were in action for about 45 minutes at Canada Life Center in Winnipeg, as the full group minus one took the ice in advance of tomorrow evening’s showdown.

The top six looked to be intact from how the group played yesterday –

Byfield – Kopitar – Kempe
Fiala – Danault – Arvidsson

The bottom six had eight forwards, who rotated throughout the lines. The lines last night were made up of Iafallo/Lizotte/Vilardi and Anderson-Dolan/Kupari/Kaliyev. Today, the currently injured pair of Trevor Moore and Carl Grundstrom rotated between the lines and didn’t really give an indication of whether or not they’ll be available. The Kings might not have any available options to make changes to their forward lines – more on the injured guys below – but today’s practice did not necessarily give any indications as to whether or not the Kings will make a change up front.

All seven defensemen were on the ice, rotating in with each other. Imagine that the Kings defensive pairings are relatively set at this stage, with the personnel they have. Tobias Bjornfot was the odd man out when the Kings played at Madison Square Garden, so we’ll probably get a better sense tomorrow of what the group could look like here tomorrow versus Winnipeg. Typically, it’s been a rotation between Bjornfot and veteran Alex Edler around back-to-back or condensed-rest contests.

More detail to follow tomorrow.

Notes –
A Bit Of Housekeeping
For starters, Todd McLellan shared updates on three players who did not play yesterday against the New York Rangers.

Carl Grundstrom – I think it’s important to be around your teammates as much as you can, feel the intensity of the team, of the game. Traveling with your teammates, it lets them see that you’re working hard and trying to get back into the lineup, get healthy as quickly as you can. There’s not a single negative in my mind, having him here and recovering, than being back in California.

Brendan Lemieux – Brendan obviously wasn’t around the team last night or today, he’s got a family issue that we’re giving him some time with and we fully support him on it.

Trevor Moore – He’s available when he feels good. Today was a good test for him, obviously I haven’t talked to him or to [our medical staff] so I don’t know where he’ll be at now or in the morning.

No sense from today’s practice on whether the three players will be available tomorrow against Winnipeg. There’s currently only one game left on the trip, so it’s unlikely we’d see any roster movement in advance of the game, unless it was potentially related to those in question. Moore is on the active roster with a day-to-day designation and Lemieux is also on the active roster. Grundstrom is on injured reserve and would need to be activated to the active roster in order to play. That transaction would require a roster move from a 23-man limit standpoint, though it would not require any cap space. Will see how everything goes with respect to morning skate.

A Good Practice Day

Nothin’ like the beautiful sounds of hockey 😌 pic.twitter.com/ImiZP1A9Zq

— LA Kings (@LAKings) February 28, 2023

I don’t know if you’ll ever find a player who says he LOVES practice, but they can all acknolwedge that they need it from time to time. A little bit of that today from the LA Kings, who hit the ice in Winnipeg for their first practice in seven days, their first since a very quick skate in El Segundo one week ago today, prior to boarding a plane for Minnesota.

Adrian Kempe – We worked on some things that maybe we weren’t as happy with on this trip, breakouts, being cleaner. We haven’t practiced in a long time now, so it’s good to get the touches in to work on the details.

Matt Roy – We haven’t really had many practices and there are just some little things that we want to clean up, take with us to the game tomorrow and hopefully take back home.

While you’ll never hear a full breakdown from a practice day, the Kings have focused clearly on certain aspects of their game that they want to address. It’s been far from bad over the four games, but far from perfect at the same time. They seized the opportunity to do so today, with McLellan agreeing that it was a “sharp” performance during the skate.

“We had a video session, as we often do before practice, we reviewed the trip so far,” McLellan said. “We went through some of the positives, some of the negatives and talked about things that we feel we can clean up. We can’t clean up a puck going off somebody’s stick and into the net or somebody’s skate, those things happen, but there are some controllable moments where we either put ourselves in a bad situation, through our own play, the way we handle the puck, the decisions we make or we’re out of structure and we don’t complete the connecting of the dots. We all have the ability to do that, so we need to clean some things up.”

McLellan added that he doesn’t believe the Kings have been bad on this trip, but acknowledged that there are elements of the game that have cost the team goals and ultimately points.

He pointed to pucks being on the Kings tape and turnovers that have resulted. He pointed to smaller details in the game that haven’t been there, combined with decision-making and execution around those details. Today’s skate was hopefully an opportunity for the group to turn a few of those areas around, heading into a matchup against a Western Conference foe that he played well in their own building so far this season.

“I don’t think we’ve played poorly on this road trip, but the difference is the details and that means we’ve left some points on the board that we’d prefer to have,” he added. “Looking back at the goals, we haven’t been under siege in our end and in d-zone coverage for long stretches, that could happen tomorrow. The goals against have been on our tape and we’ve been making poor decisions with the puck or poor execution with it. We’re trying to clean some of that up.”

As always, the proof is in the pudding and we won’t know exactly what that looks like until we see it in action tomorrow night.

Workin' in Winnipeg 💪 pic.twitter.com/GCDUOyfLNP

— LA Kings (@LAKings) February 27, 2023

Balancing Balance
Lastly, Insiders, sharing a quote from McLellan with regards to balance.

In this morning’s story, I asked the question that was really just thinking out loud – how do you balance individuals who have an off night versus an overall body of work that might say otherwise. Here was his response, plus a response to a follow-up question –

Todd McLellan on balancing a bad night versus an overall body of work
I think we have to look at their body of work as a whole. When we look at our team, there’s players at different levels of experience, different levels of expectation and often their minutes reflect on it. Then, you’ve got to look at that and see what is their impact as a group or an individual on the game. Some guys play more, they’re more susceptible to mistakes because they’re on the ice more, but they also get more chance to produce. So, if you’re a lower-minute guy, I’ll use that for example, if you’re a lower minute guy, maybe not producing as much offense you’ve got to play clean and that leads to more ice time and more. We haven’t been getting that as much. We need that a little bit more from from some players, that’s how they’re going to graduate and move up.

McLellan on certain players having a higher “ATM Balance” than others
A little bit. Certain individuals have a longer leash, but that leash when they started wasn’t that long. They’ve earned that leash and are they held accountable? Of course they are. We talk to them, but we put them back out. I think of some of our younger players, they’re starting to get a leash. They start to get a little more time because of experience and the ability to repair things, fix things and their impact on the game, but we all just think about it in the moment. I look at Arthur, I look at Gabe, I look back two or three years and the leash is a lot more loose now than it was then. So, good for them, but extend it a little bit more now if you can.

Kings and Jets tomorrow evening in the Peg. Game preview and a full day of coverage to follow!

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