2/17 Preview – Back-To-Back Begins in Boston + Getting Going Early, Big Saves For Dave

WHO: Los Angeles Kings (25-16-10) @ Boston Bruins (32-12-10)
WHAT: NHL REGULAR-SEASON GAME
WHEN: Saturday, February 17 @ 9:30 AM Pacific
WHERE: TD Garden – Boston, MA
HOW TO FOLLOW: VIDEO: ABC/ESPN+ – AUDIO – iHeart Radio – TWITTER: @DooleyLAK & @LAKings

TONIGHT’S MATCHUP: The LA Kings continue a four-game road swing on the east coast tonight in Boston to complete their season series against the Bruins in the first game of a back-to-back which concludes in Pittsburgh on Sunday.

HEAD-TO-HEAD: Forward Alex Laferriere scored his first career goal against Boston in the lone previous matchup earlier this season on Oct. 21 in LA, while Pierre-Luc Dubois recorded his first assist with the Kings in what was a 4-2 loss to the Bruins. Carl Grundstrom, Kevin Fiala, Matt Roy and Trevor Lewis were also on the scoresheet that night. Kings captain Anze Kopitar leads the group with 19 career points (6-13=19) from 26 games played against Boston.

Adrian Kempe led the way with two goals against the Bruins last season, which both came in a Dec. 15 come-from-behind win in Boston at TD Garden during a span of less than 10 minutes in the third period. The tallies, which both had primary assists by Fiala, pulled the Kings even and forced extra time where Trevor Moore eventually netted a game-winning shootout strike.

LA has found late-game magic in their last three trips to Beantown, which included a goal by Moore in the final minute of regulation before an overtime win on Mar. 7, 2022, and another game-tying tally from Matt Roy with 2:01 to play on Dec. 17, 2019, that led to a Kopitar OT winner.

KINGS VITALS: The Kings did not practice on Friday after traveling to Boston from New Jersey Thursday night. With no time for a morning skate today before an early 12:30 p.m. ET puck drop, we’ll have to wait and see if there are any changes to the lineup from what was deployed two days ago in a win over the Devils.

Among the Kings’ options in net, Cam Talbot has a lifetime record of 8-5-0 in 13 games versus Boston, with a .916 save percentage and a 2.77 goals-against average. David Rittich has less of a sample size, with just three appearances against the Bruins and a record of 1-1-1 with a 2.62 goals-against and a .919 save percentage.

Line rushes from Wednesday’s win in New Jersey shown below –

Byfield – Kopitar – Fiala
Moore – Danault – Arvidsson
Laferriere – Dubois – Kempe
Anderson-Dolan – Turcotte – Lewis

Anderson – Doughty
Gavrikov – Roy
Englund – Clarke

Rittich / Talbot

The two healthy options for a change in personnel include Jordan Spence on the back end, who sat out on Wednesday, or Arthur Kaliyev, who has not yet appeared in a game since Jim Hiller was named the team’s interim head coach.

BRUINS VITALS: Boston has lost three in a row, including a recent 4-1 home defeat at the hands of the Seattle Kraken on Wednesday night. Since the break, the Bruins are just 1-3-1, with their lone win coming in an impressive 4-0 shutout of Vancouver on Feb. 8. They’ve also dropped recent games to Calgary, Washington and lost in a shootout to Tampa Bay on Tuesday. Saturday’s game concludes a six-game homestand for the B’s at TD Garden.

Per Bruins beat reporter Fluto Shinzawa, here’s how Boston lined up last time out versus the Kraken –

Per warmups:

Marchand-Coyle-Frederic
DeBrusk-Zacha-Pastrnak
Van Riemsdyk-Geekie-Richard
Heinen-Boqvist-Steen

Grzelcyk-McAvoy
Lindholm-Carlo
Forbort-Wotherspoon

Swayman

— Fluto Shinzawa (@FlutoShinzawa) February 15, 2024

With the recent loss to Seattle, the Bruins no longer hold the top in the Atlantic outright and are currently tied with Florida at the top of the Eastern Conference, each team with 74 points apiece to their name. With two months still to play in the regular season, the Panthers have the current tiebreaker by virtue of their 30 regulation wins while riding a hot stretch where they’ve captured four games in a row coming out of the NHL All-Star break.

It’s no surprise that David Pastrnak has led the way for Boston with 78 points this year while playing in all of the team’s 54 games (34-44=78). Brad Marchand, who has 25 career points on 16 goals and nine assists against the Kings, recently hit the 50-point mark for the season with an even 25 goals and 25 assists in the club’s 54 contests.

Notes –
Getting Going Early
In overcoming Tuesday’s loss to Buffalo that started the current road trip on a low note, Jim Hiller mentioned the team’s first period effort in New Jersey, which featured a 13-5 shots-on-goal edge, as a good sign they had the right mindset to quickly right the ship.

“I thought it really set the tone,” Hiller said. “The first four shifts one after the other. We felt like okay, we’re here to play. We put that game behind us and that was our best period. The first was our best, no question.”

It was also telling that despite the solid start, with Hiller noting it was his team’s best period of the game, LA went into the first intermission without a goal. But they were able to carry their momentum into the later stages of the contest, aided by results on special teams with both a shorthanded goal in the second and a power play goal in the third.

Special teams dominated play in the final 40 minutes, and the one power play goal by Byfield was enough to get the Kings a winning result.

“I thought their goalie played very well, especially in the first,” Hiller said. “But when you’re standing behind the bench and you see that start, you feel pretty good. The guys are all in, every line, every set of defensemen.”

The Kings will look for the same type of energy on Saturday when they get going earlier in the day in Boston, no matter what lineup they ice.

A quick start with no time wasted at the start of the game was also something Rittich mentioned postgame, as another individual who was looking to move past the loss to the Sabres.

“The response was huge,” Rittich said. “Compared to the Buffalo game it was a better start. We played our game, did the right things at the right time and didn’t do any stupid stuff that can hurt us and take us down.”

Big Saves For Dave
With 26 stops and a win in New Jersey on Thursday, Rittich improved his NHL record to 7-2-3 this season, helping the Kings earn points in 10 of his 14 appearances.

He also lowered his season goals-against average to 2.12 and strengthened his save percentage, which is at 0.923. It’s a smaller sample size, but those numbers are on track to be the best of his NHL career, which has spanned eight seasons dating back to 2017.

Those numbers even include a season-worst performance for Rittich and the Kings in Buffalo to begin this current road trip, where he allowed five goals on 22 shots. Thursday’s win represented a bounce back effort for him, as well as the rest of the group.

After a busy third period with 15 shots by the Devils, more than they combined for in the first and second periods (12), Rittich mentioned he continued to feel good as he had in his previous appearances with the group earlier in the season, even though many of his earlier games didn’t have the heavy pressure he faced late in the third period.

“I feel good. I mean, I’m feeling good no matter what situation it is,” Rittich said. “It’s a lot on those guys because they made me feel good.”

Hiller doubled down on Rittich’s performance and mindset in New Jersey, mentioning he also had to make key saves late in the game to keep his team in front.

“He had to make saves at the end,” Hiller said. “They put a pretty good push on late and he was there to make those saves. That’s where you need.”

As many goalies tend to do, netminder credited the group in front of him for keeping him ready to go. But Rittich has carried himself with boisterous energy ever since he joined the team and that may have had a similar effect on his teammates to their welcoming of him.

“They made me feel comfortable,” said Rittich. “I’m just trying to pay off my opportunity here and when my name is called to play I’m just trying to do my best. Some games place more on me and some games less, but we wanted to prove today the Buffalo game was just a fluke.”

Back-To-Back Begins in Boston
The win in New Jersey put Tuesday’s lopsided loss to Buffalo in the rearview mirror for the Kings, and they’ll look to have another good team effort against a Boston side that’s looking to break out of a recent slump this afternoon.

Saturday’s game begins a back-to-back with a Sunday afternoon contest in Pittsburgh looming that will conclude the east coast trip.

The Kings haven’t fared well in the second half of the back-to-back games this season, with a record of 1-3-2 in the six previous occurrences, but they haven’t had one in over a month, which featured a 5-2 win in Carolina before a 5-1 loss in Dallas during mid-January.

But first things first, and LA will be looking to continue a streak of three straight wins in Boston which will be the much harder matchup of the two on paper against what should be a hungry Bruins team.

Adrian Kempe, who addressed the media on Thursday after playing on a new-look line alongside Dubois and Laferriere while posting a shorthanded assist with his old linemate Kopitar, mentioned the Kings recent success in Boston while acknowledging that the Bruins will be a hard opponent to match up with.

“It’s going to be a tough game,” said Kempe. “Afternoon game, first of all. Boston is one of the better teams in the league. Usually, we come in there and we’ve played pretty well there so it’s going to be a fun game against a top team, but we’ve got to have the same energy we had tonight and we should be fine.”

Game three of four on the trip begins early Saturday with a spotlight matchup that will have a national audience for the Kings to showcase themselves in front of.