3/11 Preview – LAK “Fairly Optimistic” on Anderson playing + Lineup Notes, Desperation, Winning Homestand

WHO: Los Angeles Kings (32-20-11) vs. New York Islanders (29-20-14)
WHAT: NHL REGULAR-SEASON GAME
WHEN: Monday, March 11 @ 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 five-game homestand this evening against the Islanders, closing out the season series versus New York.

HEAD-TO-HEAD: Forward Kevin Fiala led the Kings with two points (0-2-2) when these teams met back in December, a 3-2 Islanders overtime victory. Defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov and forward Adrian Kempe scored LA’s goals in that game. Forward Trevor Moore has four points (2-2-4) from four games played against New York since joining the Kings.

KINGS VITALS: Following an off day on Sunday, the Kings reconviened for a full-team morning skate here today at Toyota Sports Performance Center.

Goaltender David Rittich was off the ice first this morning, as he makes his return between the pipes for the first time since February 26 in Edmonton. Rittich has faced the New York Islanders three times throughout his NHL career, posting a record of 1-1-0, with a .864 save percentage and a 3.07 goals-against average.

With this morning’s skate came line rushes, with the Kings showing the following alignment earlier today –

Turcotte – Kopitar – Byfield
Moore – Danault – Fiala
Laferriere – Dubois – Kempe
Kaliyev – Lizotte – Lewis

Anderson – Doughty
Gavrikov – Roy
Englund – Spence
Moverare

Rittich / Talbot

First things first, it looks as if we could see the return of defenseman Mikey Anderson tonight against the Islanders.

“He’ll be a tremendous addition to the team, it looks like he’s going to go,” Head Coach Jim Hiller said this morning. “Again, as with Kempe, he’s still got a couple things, hurdles to get over, but we’re pretty optimistic.”

Hiller added that the Kings haven’t made a final decision on the player coming out, should Anderson be able to go. From this morning’s skate, it appears to be a decision between defenseman Jacob Moverare and an 11/7 alignment, versus forward Arthur Kaliyev and a 12/6 look.

The Kings only have 21 players on the roster, so likely expect to see them all take warmups tonight before getting a final decision in advance of tonight’s game.

ISLANDERS VITALS: The Islanders have won six consecutive games entering tonight, including wins over Anaheim and San Jose to begin their California swing. With the six straight victories, New York has surged into the final playoff position in the Eastern Conferennce entering tonight’s game.

Playing on a back-to-back, look for the Islanders to turn back to usual starting goaltender Ilya Sorokin, after Semyon Varlymov picked up the win yesterday over the Ducks. Sorokin has made three career appearances against the Kings, posting a record of 1-2-0, with a .909 save percentage and a 3.05 goals-against average.

Per Stefan Rosner of The Hockey News, here’s how the Islanders lined up last time out versus Anaheim –

#Isles lines vs. #FlyTogether:

Nelson-Horvat-Barzal
Lee-Pageau-Palmieri
Engvall-Cizikas-Holmstrom
Martin-MacLean-Clutterbuck

Pelech-Dobson
Romanov-Pulock
Reilly-Aho

Varlamov
Sorokin

— Stefen Rosner (@stefen_rosner) March 10, 2024

Over their six-game winning streak, the Islanders have been led by 10 points (4-6-10) from forward Brock Nelson, who is tied for fifth in the NHL in scoring during that stretch. Nelson has 29 goals in total on the season, one shy of hitting 30 for his third consecutive season.

Notes –
Finish Strong
“We’re going to see their best and they better see our best because it’s going to be a playoff style game and we should be just as desperate as they are.”

Pretty clear message from Jim Hiller heading into tonight’s game versus the Islanders.

The Kings are getting New York on their strongest run of play this season. Six straight wins for a team that’s found its form on route to closing a gap in the Eastern Conference standings. All of a sudden, the Islanders are in a playoff position. With that in mind, they present a tough test for a Kings team that also needs wins to maintain and improve its position in the standings.

For a couple of reasons, tonight is an important game for LA.

First and foremost, the Kings are coming off a loss they weren’t particularly thrilled with. While it was a 2-1 game in the third period, the Kings were overmatched for most of the night against a Dallas team atop the Central Division standings. Where it leaves them is tied with Vegas for the third and final playoff spot in the Pacific, as well as with a six-point lead over Minnesota for the second wild-card position.

Entering tonight’s game, there’s got to be that element of desperation for the Kings and they believe it’s an important element to put themselves in a position to get a result.

“Everyone wants to be in a position to make the playoffs and we’ve put ourselves in that spot,” forward Blake Lizotte said. “It’s fun to play desperate hockey at the end of the year, really. I think every team wants to win, get into the playoffs and I think we have a good chance to do that. Desperation is a key thing to get in. I think we need to show up with that every night.”

There’s also a winning homestand on the line tonight.

To me, that feels perhaps more like a media-driven narrative than anything the Kings might be actually concerned with. But, with the team’s play at home this season, could it carry a little bit more weight than it ordinarily would? 13 wins from 31 games played on home ice, 27th most in the NHL this season.

The players put the focus more on the importance of improving the team’s overall play at home than a specific homestand record, but also emphasized the need for points of any kind down the stretch.

Tonight does present an opportunity to post a 3-1-1 homestand on the team’s longest stretch of consecutive games at Crypto.com Arena this season. With a strong, 60-minute performance, the Kings will have a chance at it here tonight. The real message, though, is about re-establishing a certain way of playing on home ice and a certain mentality for other teams to play against.

“We know that we haven’t won enough at home, so it’s something we’re definitely aware of,” defenseman Drew Doughty added. “We want our arena to be hard to play in, we want other teams to be worried coming in here, that they’re going to get a tough match.”

Good opportunity tonight to show it on the ice.

Hiller Talks Adjustments
While we don’t know for sure what to expect tonight for the Kings, we’ve got a pretty close idea.

Mikey Anderson looks set to return to the lineup, pending the completion of the final items on his return-to-play checklist.

“[He brings] so many things,” Hiller said this morning. “I’ll just start with the leadership, in the locker room, around the team, but then everybody is looking for that dependable, physical, defensive defenseman and that’s what Mikey is, night after night after night. He makes mistakes like everybody else is going to, but he keeps his to a minimum. He’s just somebody to rely on.”

Should Anderson play, he would likely resume his normal placement in the lineup alongside Drew Doughty on the team’s top defensive pairing. Whether that be as one of six defensemen or seven remains unclear, but should all go according to plan, and Anderson does return tonight for the Kings, it’s something that everyone is looking forward to.

Up front, the Kings look like they’ll shuffle things around a bit, after going the final 59:34 of Thursday’s game without a goal.

Alex Turcotte has seen time on the top line with Anze Kopitar and Quinton Byfield recently and he skated in that spot again this morning. That moved Adrian Kempe onto a line with Pierre-Luc Dubois and Alex Laferriere. Hiller has always shown a willingness to move the pieces around as needed, as he feels the team needs a spark or as he sees certain players meriting more of a role on a given night.

Regarding the Dallas game, Hiller felt that the Kings lacked in a number of areas, but physicality, especially in the offensive zone, was first and foremost. Other than the play that led to Kevin Fiala’s early goal, he didn’t see nearly enough physicality stemming from the forecheck, led by the F1 in those situations. He believes that Kempe slotting in on that line can help in that area.

“If you think about Laf, Kempe and Dubois, all three of them should be able to get on the forecheck, all three of them, so that should be a hard, forechecking line that really can create chaos,” Hiller said. “They all skate really well and that’s what we’re looking for. I talked about F1 on the forecheck, creating some physicality, some intensity early, nevermind anything else that line does, because you usually just build off of that, good things come after that later. That’s what we should see out of that line, those three.”

The last piece to the lineup puzzle comes with regards to the ultimate alignment. The Kings could go with 11 forwards and seven defensemen or they could go with 12 forwards and six defensemen. As noted above, that final decision likely comes down to Jacob Moverare and Arthur Kaliyev, based on today’s skate, but with a player returning from injury, there’s always that fail/safe in place regarding having options.

“We haven’t made that final decision, we’ll talk about that with the coaches here this afternoon,” he added. “We’ve only got 21 on our roster, so we’ll see what that looks like.”

Moving ahead, the choices available only figure to grow. The Kings have Viktor Arvidsson and Carl Grundstrom still waiting in the wings, which would add to the options at Hiller’s disposal. Arvidsson has resumed skating on his own, in a non-contact setting, which is really good news. Rob Blake shared that his timeline is trending towards lining up with his LTIR return date, which is this coming Saturday versus Dallas at the earliest. Grundstrom is a couple weeks beyond that. As players continue to return to the lineup, and the Kings round out the group they’ll have available to them for the stretch run, it’ll be interesting to see how these adjustments continue.

For tonight, Kings complete their longest homestand of the season. 2-1-1 entering today’s game, with a red-hot opponent to close things out.