10/24 Preview – Ready To Go At Home + Copley In Net, McLellan on PP, ESPN Frozen Frenzy

WHO: Los Angeles Kings (2-2-1) vs. Arizona Coyotes (3-2-0)
WHAT: NHL REGULAR-SEASON GAME
WHEN: Tuesday, October 24 @ 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: The Kings conclude a short, two-game homestand this evening as they host the Arizona Coyotes in a Tuesday-night tussle.

HEAD-TO-HEAD: Each team took care of business at home last season, as the Kings posted a 2-0-1 record overall against Arizona during the 2022-23 campaign. Forward Kevin Fiala led the Kings last season with five points (3-2-5) from the three games played, while forward Anze Kopitar also had three goals last season versus the Coyotes. Throughout his NHL career, Drew Doughty has more goals (14) and points (46) against Arizona than any other NHL team.

KINGS VITALS: The Kings held an optional morning skate today, off of yesterday’s full off day. Line combinations from yesterday are listed below –

Byfield – Kopitar – Kempe
Moore – Danault – Kaliyev
Fiala – Dubois – Laferriere
Grundstrom – Lizotte – Lewis
Anderson-Dolan

Anderson – Doughty
Gavrikov – Roy
Englund – Spence
Bjornfot

Talbot
Copley

Pheonix Copley was the first goaltender off this morning, making him tonight’s projected starter versus the Coyotes, confirmed by Head Coach Todd McLellan following today’s practice. Copley has faced Arizona once during his professional career, as he made 27 saves on 29 shots to earn the victory back on December 6, 2018 as a member of the Washington Capitals.

McLellan is not expecting any lineup chances, so the Kings appear set to run with the same 18 skaters tonight as they have over their last three games. Should they opt for a change, forward Jaret Anderson-Dolan and defenseman Tobias Bjornfot are both options to check into the lineup. As noted yesterday, the Kings expect to see players moved around at times, even as personnel remains the same.

COYOTES VITALS: Arizona has won its last two games entering tonight’s action, including a 2-1 victory over Anaheim on Saturday last time out.

Goaltender Connor Ingram is expected to get the nod between the pipes tonight for the visitors, continuing their alternating schedule in net to open the season. Ingram faced the Kings once last season, as he entered in relief last February, stopping all 23 shots he faced in an eventual shootout loss.

Per Arizona’s team account, here’s how the Coyotes lined up against Anaheim this weekend –

Home Opener Lineup! pic.twitter.com/faRFvNCdmb

— Arizona Coyotes (@ArizonaCoyotes) October 21, 2023

Arizona enters tonight’s game as one of the NHL’s stingiest defensive teams, having allowed the league’s third-least goals and second-fewest goals at 5-on-5. Former Kings defenseman Sean Durzi is expected to play against his former team for the first time since he was traded to Arizona this summer, while we could also see former Kings blueliner Troy Stecher, who last played for the Kings during the 2022 postseason.

Notes –
Re-Establishing Home Ice
The LA Kings are 2-0-0 on the road early this season. At home, however, they’ve picked up just one point from their first three games played.

The most important part of that sentence is the timeframe – three games. You can pinpoint just about any three-game sample throughout a season and find three games without a win. Speaking with Todd McLellan this morning, he said it’s “a little bit early to be discussing home record, road record”, and he’s correct.

The Kings have made a few more mistakes at home, though, looking specifically at goals against, and we’d likely be looking, at least, at one additional point were things cleaner specifically against Carolina. Right now, it’s about the Kings focusing on doing what they do and going from there.

“I think there’s talk right now of the home record, but we’ve played three pretty damn good teams here at home,” McLellan said this morning. “We’ve made some mistakes that are self-inflicted, so if we can clean that up, no matter where we play, we can play neutral site, home or away. If we clean some of that up then we have a chance to be successful.”

Facing such a difficult schedule in the early goings has presented the Kings with a bar to test themselves against.

Teams like Colorado, Carolina and Boston are the types of teams the Kings want to elevate to be able to beat, especially on home ice, if they want to ascend to where they’d like to be this season. The Kings did not win those games, so it gives the team a path forward as to the areas they need to work on. Forward Adrian Kempe felt it also identified parts of the game that other teams played well against them, things they’d like to be doing themselves.

“I think it’s good to get good tests in early, get a kind of a wake up call, especially for us when we haven’t played our best so far,” forward Adrian Kempe said this morning. “The way teams have been playing us, that’s kind of the way we have to start playing, be hard, physical and hard to play against in front of the net. Those are the areas we worked on yesterday and we can be better in those areas.”

Last season, LA was one of the NHL’s best teams on home ice. They won 26 of 41 games played at Crypto.com Arena and ranked fifth in the league in both wins and points (56).

As they host Arizona tonight, they’d certainly like to open their account for the season here at home. Forward Alex Laferriere put it best, when speaking after Saturday’s game against Boston.

“This is our house and we haven’t won here yet, so we want to make it difficult for teams to come in here and play us and we haven’t done that yet, so we’ve got to focus on that.”

McLellan on PP
Todd McLellan also spoke about the Kings’ power play this morning, which enters tonight’s action directly in the median of NHL rankings.

The Kings enter the day in 16th across the league, a bit below last season thus far, but as has been stressed, it’s five games in, so there are no sweeping declarations coming at this stage.

What came come, regardless of sample size, is improvement and adapting. The Kings know they need to see both.

McLellan pointed to different personnel as a reason things might not be moving at full speed here in the early goings. With Viktor Arvidsson out of the lineup, the Kings are currently using eight forwards who shoot left on the power play. That could change with Alex Laferriere at some point, as he is potentially worked in, but even then, Laferriere is a different type of player than Arvidsson is, or Gabe Vilardi is.

“Our power play is much different this year than it was last year for the simple reason of hands,” McLellan said this morning. “You don’t have Gabe, Arvy or Durz, so you lose three righties and it makes a huge difference, so we’re trying to evolve a little bit, we’re trying to adjust. We’re set in our ways, so we keep going back to something that isn’t there because of the lack of hands, but that’s just going to take some time.”

It’s not an issue that can’t be overcome and it’s not like the Kings haven’t buried anything on the power play. They have four goals from five games played, which is 0.80 goals-per-game, compared to 0.83 last season. When things are humming along, it looks damn good, even when it’s not scoring.

Take last game against Boston, when the Kings had an extended power-play look in the first period. In right around three minutes of time spent on the man advantage, the Kings had six high-danger chances, including four that came skating 5-on-4, which is obviously more comparable. That was the sequence McLellan was most happy with in that game, even minus the goal.

“We played with authority,” McLellan said of that power-play opportunity. “We played thinking about the net and getting to the net instead of, what I call it, in their zone, looking good doing nothing, moving the puck around and spread out all over the place, two minutes in there, but you get nothing done. There has to be a directness, there has to be a purpose to it and I thought on that first power play against Boston we had that. We didn’t get rewarded, but we had it.”

From that point on though, the Kings had just two high-danger chances the rest of the night in more than five minutes of power-play time. So, it’s a work in progress.

It will likely remain that, at least in the early goings, as the Kings adjust to new personnel, which impacts overall strategy. It’s an 82-game season, so there’s time, but the two points tonight are as important as the two points in March. Continued work is being put in with the hope of reaping the rewards sooner rather than later. The power play was a strength of last season’s team and the Kings want it to be a strength this year as well.

“[Without] the righties in and around the area, or down low, that makes a bit of a difference,” McLellan added. “We have talked about it, we’ve discussed it, we’ve worked on some things, but it’s also a big change for a group that had a lot of success last year.”

Looking ahead to tonight, all 32 teams around the NHL are in action, with staggered start times, in what is being called the “Frozen Frenzy” by the league.

Sixteen games, sixteen different start times. Welcome to Frozen Frenzy.#NHLStats: https://t.co/DVWrJ0uSNd pic.twitter.com/6YFGJh44IA

— NHL Public Relations (@PR_NHL) October 24, 2023

If you’re so inclined, each of the games will start 15 or more minutes apart, NCAA Tournament style, to provide an opportunity for fans to see more of each game. In the US, across the ESPN family of networks, there will be coverage on ESPN2 in an NFL Red Zone style, with live look-ins and coverage around the league. A cool initiative that we will see how it goes.

The Kings will be broadcast as normal on Bally Sports West for those in market, with the ESPN2 option also available in LA and the Kings are one of just five games that starts after 6 PM Pacific, so assume there will be a good amount of Kings coverage shown!