1/28 Preview – Sunday Matinee + Wild Card Standings, Laf Factory, Time To Go

WHO: Los Angeles Kings (22-15-9) @ St. Louis Blues (25-20-2)
WHAT: NHL REGULAR-SEASON GAME
WHEN: Sunday, January 28 @ 11:00 AM Pacific
WHERE: Enterprise Center – St. Louis, MO
HOW TO FOLLOW: VIDEO: Bally Sports West – AUDIO – iHeart Radio – TWITTER: @DooleyLAK & @LAKings

TONIGHT’S MATCHUP: The Kings visit St. Louis for the first time this season, in a battle of two teams separated by a single point in the Western Conference standings.

HEAD-TO-HEAD: Forward Adrian Kempe led the Kings with two points (1-1-2) last time these two teams met, a 5-1 Kings victory at Crypto.com Arena. Kempe has four goals and six points versus the Blues over the last two seasons. Since the 2020-21 season, forward Kevin Fiala has 17 points (6-11-17) from 13 games played against the Blues, the fifth highest total across the NHL.

KINGS VITALS: Considering the afternoon puck drop, the Kings did not hold a morning skate today in Missouri.

Should goaltender David Rittich get the start today, after entering in relief on Friday in Colorado, he brings a career mark of 2-1-1 versus St. Louis, with a .882 save percentage and a 3.49 goals-against average. Should the Kings turn back to Cam Talbot between the pipes, he’s faced the Blues 23 times throughout his NHL career, with a record of 8-8-6, with a .896 save percentage and a 3.11 goals-against average.

With no morning skate today, unclear exactly how the Kings will align this afternoon. Friday’s lineup embedded below for reference, though there will be at least one change –

Tonight’s @LAKings Line Rushes –

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

Anderson – Doughty
Gavrikov – Roy
Englund – Clarke

Talbot
Rittich

Per @LAKingsPR, Quinton Byfield is out tonight (illness)

— Zach Dooley (@DooleyLAK) January 27, 2024

The Kings are expecting forward Quinton Byfield back in today’s lineup, after he missed Friday’s game with an illness. Expect Byfield back alongside Anze Kopitar and Adrian Kempe on the team’s top forward line. Additionally, the Kings recalled forward Alex Turcotte from the AHL’s Ontario Reign yesterday afternoon and he linked up with the team in St. Louis yesterday evening. Turcotte could make his season debut here today against the Blues. Defenseman Jordan Spence is also an option to check back in, should the Kings look for a change on the blueline.

BLUES VITALS: St. Louis has won its last four games entering today’s action, including consecutive 4-3 overtime wins, over Seattle and Vancouver, earlier this week.

Assuming usual starting goaltender Jordan Binnington returns between the pipes, he brings with him a 5-8-2 record against the Kings. Binnington has a .903 lifetime save percentage and a 2.97 goals-against average from 15 appearances versus Los Angeles.

Per Chris Pinkert of the Blues team website, here’s how St. Louis lined up last time out –

Forwards
Pavel Buchnevich – Robert Thomas – Jordan Kyrou
Brandon Saad – Brayden Schenn – Jake Neighbours
Nathan Walker – Kevin Hayes – Alexey Toropchenko
Nikita Alexandrov – Oskar Sundqvist – Sammy Blais

Defense
Nick Leddy – Colton Parayko
Torey Krug – Matthew Kessel
Marco Scandella – Scott Perunovich

Goalie
Jordan Binnington

Forward Robert Thomas ranks inside the NHL’s Top-20 in scoring this season in assists (34) and points (51). Former Kings forward Brayden Schenn is expected to center the second line tonight in St. Louis.

Notes –
A-Point, A-Part
All of a sudden, the Kings have two games before the NHL’s All-Star break against teams within a single point in the Western Conference standings.

Recent form is obvious – the Kings have just two wins from their past 15 games played in total and it’s brought them from a comfortable place in the Pacific Division standings to a wild-card berth as of this writing. The Kings have 53 points in the standings, one ahead of today’s opponent in St. Louis and equal to Wednesday’s foe, the Nashville Predators.

That makes these two pretty big games.

For the Kings though, really, every game is a big game. Struggles right now are outweighing opponent. Look no further than wins over Carolina and New York and losses against San Jose and Buffalo. It’s a sentiment that’s been shared several times as of late – the Kings are approaching each game right now as a must-win game because that’s where they’re at right now. When very little is going right, and losses are piling up,

“It’s felt like a [must-win] game for a week, two weeks now,” defenseman Drew Doughty said recently. “We’re down at the bottom, we continually say it’s a must-win game……we need to turn it around right now.”

Turning it around, though, is easier said than done, isn’t it?

The Kings are in it right now. Yesterday, Head Coach Todd McLellan was asked about the notion of how the group is still trying to have fun during the toughest stretch of the season. Certainly isn’t any fun right now.

“Everybody wants to have fun and we were having a lot of fun when we were doing things right and we weren’t cheating,” McLellan said. “Now, we’re trying to find fun again because we started to cheat and we didn’t do things right. So, it’s not so much fun coming out of the [crap] house or whatever you want to call it, but we put ourselves there. We talked about that the other day, everybody wants to have fun. Well, we put ourselves in the situation and we need to work to earn the right to have fun again……if you truly want to have fun playing the game, you need to put the work in and then you’re in the right to have a lot of fun.”

Yesterday’s practice was a step in that direction.

Small moments like a shootout drill, after a learning-intensive practice, gave the players an opportunity to enjoy the game together. Really, though, there won’t be much fun right now until the team starts to win games. With a ten-day break following Wednesday’s game in Nashville, a couple wins against teams that are now suddenly direct competitors for a postseason spot would go a long way.

Laf Factory
While we’ll assume that forward Quinton Byfield is back in his usual home this afternoon, the Kings turned to Alex Laferriere to fill Byfield’s spot on the top offensive unit on Friday evening in Denver.

“We look at Kopi and the amount of minutes that he plays and the guys that have complimented him over the last year and a bit and they’ve been workers, they’ve been speed guys with tenacity, and we tried somebody to complement that line and kind of do what Q does,” McLellan said. “Laf was the guy that the fit the bill, I thought he did a real good job.”

Laferriere has brought that type of a mentality to the Kings this season. It’s not all that surprising he was the player chosen on short notice to receive that bump in role and minutes.

In Byfield, the Kings were without a player who brings a package of size and speed that can’t be replicated, not just by a player within the organization but really around the NHL. Not a ton of guys at his size who move like he does. He’s also bought into several areas of the game that have elevated his play into one of the most reliable guys on the ice each and every night.

“I think Quinton Byfield is a consistent, steady, honest player, night after night after night,” McLellan said of Byfield. “We put him on the ice and count on him.”

McLellan has regularly complemented Laferriere on his own honest style of play. He’s a player who you know what you’re going to get from on most nights. It’s why it made sense to move him into that spot in the lineup against Colorado.

Laferriere appreciated the trust from the coaching staff to earn that opportunity, noting that building it is something he’s worked hard on throughout his rookie season.

“What I’ve been focused on is building trust with the coaches and the coaching staff,” Laferriere said. “When that happens, it shows that my hard work has paid off and I think I just tried to do my best to fill in Q’s spot, he’s a very integral part of our lineup. Missing him definitely hurt, but I just tried my best.”

That trust has also earned Laferriere some time on the power play, beginning on the second unit and up on the top unit on Friday. He rewarded the Kings with the primary assist on their only goal in Colorado and has three assists in just over 30 minutes of PP time this season, all first assists. Among Kings players with at least 20 minutes of 5-on-4 power-play time this season, Laferriere leads the Kings in both assists and primary assists on a per/60 basis.

Not to mention, he brings a right shot, which the Kings have missed this season.

“I’m a righty, we don’t have many righties, so just putting a righty out there kind of creates new openings and new shots that we didn’t have before,” he said. “I think the past two games we’ve had similar goals on the power play, PL scored and then Kevin scored too, so being a righty, just bringing new shots to our power play.”

Expect to see Laferriere back with his usual unit tonight, alongside Pierre-Luc Dubois, and likely back on the second PP unit as well. Regardless of alignment, a good sign to see a young player earn the trust and role he has, especially with the struggles of the group as a whole. Someone the Kings hope to count on not just here this season, but in the long run.

Kings and Blues, an 11 AM Pacific puck drop in Missouri.

Heading into today’s game, as Mikey Anderson said on Friday, it’s time to stop saying it and time to start doing it. There’s no switch to flip or a lever to pull that simply turns thinking and saying the right things into getting the team back in gear after a stretch of 13 defeats from 15 games. And, with things going as far as they have and for as long as they have, you could tell that solutions and answers are running thin, at least when addressed publicly in the media. That’s really not what’s important right now, though. The Kings still feel the work is there. They still feel they have the group to pull out of this and perform. With two games ahead, against teams that are now within a victory of surpassing the Kings for a playoff spot, it’s time to take all of those things and do it on the ice. It’s time.