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Game Analysis

10/12 Preview – No Changes Expected + Boston Flashback, Leveling Up, Icetime Distribution

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WHO: Los Angeles Kings (1-0-0) @ Boston Bruins (1-1-0)
WHAT: 2024-25 Regular-Season Game
WHEN: Saturday, October 12 @ 10:00 AM Pacific
WHERE: TD Garden – Boston, MA
HOW TO FOLLOW: VIDEO: Bally Sports West – AUDIO – ESPN LA App – TWITTER: @dooleylak & @lakings

TONIGHT’S MATCHUP: The season-opening trip rolls on as the LA Kings are in Boston for a Saturday-afternoon matinee against the Bruins.

HEAD-TO-HEAD: The teams split their meetings last season, as each won on the road. The Kings won 5-4 here in Boston, while the Bruins took a 4-2 decision in Los Angeles.

Defenseman Brandt Clarke had a goal and an assist in Boston last season, including the game-winning goal in overtime, then first of his NHL career. Forward Alex Laferriere scored twice in two meetings against Boston, while forward Trevor Lewis had a pair of assists in the 2023-24 season series.

KINGS VITALS: Coming off a victory on Opening Night, the Kings look to make it two in a row here this afternoon in Boston.

After a stout performance in Buffalo, goaltender Darcy Kuemper is expected to get the nod again here today versus Boston. Kuemper allowed just one goal on 33 shots in the win over the Sabres, as he turned aside several Grade-A opportunities in the Game 1 victory. Lifetime, Kuemper is 2-7-0 versus Boston, with a .897 save percentage and a 2.96 goals-against average.

Head Coach Jim Hiller shared yesterday he is not expecting any changes for tonight, with the lineup from Buffalo shown here –

Laferriere – Kopitar – Kempe
Jeannot – Danault – Moore
Fiala – Byfield – Foegele
Lee – Turcotte – Lewis

Anderson – Spence
Gavrikov – Burroughs
Edmundson – Clarke

Kuemper
Rittich

As Hiller indicates, that’s the group that went out on Opening Night in Buffalo. Kings have given these lines time to gel and adjust. Another crack at it tonight.

With that comes Game 2 for Andre Lee, who made his NHL debut in Buffalo on Saturday. It’s also Game 2 for several new combinations both up front and on the blueline to ideally cement their places together. Some decent individual showings on Thursday, but overall it was a disappointing performance, despite the two points. Kings are confident they’ll clean it up coming into Boston today.

BOSTON VITALS: The Bruins have split their first two games of the season, falling to Florida on Opening Night before defeating Montreal 6-4 last time out.

Assuming he gets another start, Jeremy Swayman would make his second appearance of the season after signing an eight-year contract extension on the eve of the season. Swayman has faced the Kings three times throughout his NHL career, posting a record of 3-0-0 with a 1.33 goals-against average and a .959 save percentage.

Per Scott McLaughlin of WEEI 93.7. here’s how the Bruins lined up during yesterday’s practice –

Forward David Pastrnak led the Bruins last season with four points (1-3-4) from the two head-to-head matchups against the Kings, while forward Brad Marchand had two goals and three points. Marchand has 16 career goals from 22 games played versus Los Angeles, his highest goals-per-game rate against a single opponent. Former Kings goaltender Joonas Korpisalo is with the Bruins, but assuming he will be the backup this evening.

Storyline Of The Day – Shipping Back To Boston
Not a bad couple of memories here in Boston.

Let’s take it back to the last time the Kings were here. Sometimes it gets lost just how big that game was. The visitors were coming off a 7-0 loss in Buffalo, which was the second game out of the All-Star break, followed by a 2-1 win over New Kersey. The team’s performance coming into the All-Star break was certainly subpar, with the Kings opting for a coaching change during the break, with Jim Hiller taking over at the helm.

The Kings had back-to-back shutouts in Hiller’s first two games, one each way. The former a 4-0 win over Edmonton and the latter was the game in Buffalo, which was followed by a narrow win over New Jersey.

“It was a big game and you know what, it always is, we’ve played Boston so many times over the years,” Hiller said. “An afternoon game [today], that was an afternoon game too.”

An afternoon game with a storybook ending.

For the Kings, the game went back and forth, as it tends to do in Boston. In fact, the last six times the Kings have visited Boston, the game has extended into overtime, with the Kings winning five of those six games. In the most recent four Kings/Bruins showdowns in Massachusetts, the visitors have tied the game inside the final 2:10 of regulation. It’s actually kind of ridiculous.

Last season, Anze Kopitar tied the game late in the third period, setting the stage for one of the more exciting moments of the regular season.

“It’s definitely going to be cool to get back in that building and get back on that ice,” Clarke said. “Definitely a moment I’ll never forget, it’ll stick with me the rest of my life for sure. It’ll be cool to be back out there tomorrow.”

Two years ago, the Kings were on the ropes following a 6-0 loss in Buffalo. They responded with a 3-2 shootout win, courtesy of a Trevor Moore game-winning goal, a game that may have saved the team’s season. In 2022, it was a back-to-back after a rare win in Buffalo. In Boston, Moore tied the game late before an overtime win, as the Kings overcame injuries to both Drew Doughty and Mikey Anderson. That was a game that capped off a 3-1-0 roadtrip late in the season and served as a springboard for the team’s return to the playoffs.

While today’s game does follow a trip to Buffalo, and it is a matinee, it’s also Game 2 of the regular season. Not quite the circumstance perhaps, but anytime you roll into Boston, you know what to expect.

“In Boston, AC/DC is going to be playing and you know we’re in a hockey game and you can say all those are hard games, but I think as a player, they’re the games you love to play,” Hiller added. “It’s not all hard or difficult to get up for the game to wonder how this game is going to happen – AC/DC is going to be going and somebody’s going to bump into you. So you get ready to play.”

It’s a special game for a couple of guys, Clarke included. Alex Laferriere played at Harvard during his collegiate nhlcareer, while Andre Lee played at UMass-Lowell. Lee made the short drive to his old barn last night to drop the puck before their season opener. Let me tell you, the man was a celebrity there. Stopped every 5 seconds for a photo by the Lowell fans and he took the time for every one of them. Pretty solid week for Lee. NHL debut on Thursday, back to his old rink on Friday and his first professional game at TD Garden on Saturday.

Lee told me that when he played at UMass-Lowell, it was always their goal to “get to the Garden”, which was where the Hockey East tournament was played. He’s there now, in a bigger way. See if he can add one more to that list today.

3 To Watch For
– First things first, the Kings have several levels better in them than in Buffalo.

And they know that.

“I don’t think there’s any excuses there,” Moore said. “We were excited to go, we just didn’t execute.”

Over the first two periods, the Kings did not record a high-danger chance at 5-on-5, compared to six for Buffalo. If you factor in special teams, it was 12-1 Sabres. Without Darcy Kuemper’s heroics, the story would’ve likely been different.

“The first two periods, we didn’t play the way we wanted to play, especially in the first game of the season,” defenseman Joel Edmundson said. “We wanted to come out flying, but give a lot of credit to Buffalo – they played our game better than we did.”

That last part of the quote was interesting to me. As I watched, I thought the same thing. Buffalo played the brand of hockey the Kings want to play. I do think a part of it was a Buffalo team that was playing Game 3, as opposed to Game 1. There’s a large jump from preseason to regular season and the Sabres had two cracks at that jump already. Seemed to almost catch the Kings off guard. Can’t happen twice.

To their credit, the third period was much better, as the Kings outshot Buffalo 12-6 and evened out the scoring chances. More of that and they’ll be alright.

– I’m also keeping an eye on the distribution of minutes up front.

Last game, the top three centers – Kopitar, Danault and Byfield – each had a TOI number that started with a 19. That’s a dead-even split and it plays into what I’ve felt the Kings would do all throughout camp, which is to deviate from a traditional 1-2-3 and run three lines evenly. It won’t be even every night, different lines will emerge, but on night one, it was relatively even.

The X-Factor here could be the fourth line. Jim Hiller indicated he wished he’d played them a little bit more. When asked yesterday, he doubled down, and that could impact the numbers of the other players a bit.

“I thought Alex Turcotte played very well and didn’t play enough, so what does that look like to the other three centers’ minutes, maybe it’s a little bit less if Turc’s going as well as he did last game,” Hiller said. “So, I don’t know what the number looks like, but I think you should see that pretty balanced, I think that’s probably a fair statement. If one of the three lines is going better, we want to ride them, no matter which one it is, maybe you’ll see more there in that case, but I think I did Turc a disservice, because he played very well, and he should’ve ate some more of those minutes.”

Danault said that he isn’t opposed to losing a couple of minutes if it means a younger player like Byfield is stepping up and earning them. That’s the right mentality and if things are going well, there should be plenty to go around for everyone involved. When the sample size becomes larger, even if there is a game-to-game variance, I think that close-to-even split could remain.

– Also interested to see how the Kings deploy their defensemen today.

Looking at Tage Thompson, Buffalo’s top forward, each of the team’s LHD saw a good chunk of time there. At 5-on-5, Thompson played at least 4 minutes against all three, but no more than 6:15. In all situations, it was 6+ against all three.

The best stat line on the night fell to Vladislav Gavrikov, as the Kings controlled more than 58 percent of shot attempts with Gavrikov between the boards during the game. He was on the right side of the ledger in terms of scoring chances too.

I expect the pairings to remain the same, but in tough situations, look for the Kings to pair two of Gavrikov, Edmundson and Mikey Anderson together. Those are the three established guys and three guys who focus on defense first. We saw that in Buffalo and with Boston’s top two players – Pastrnak and Marchand – likely separated, the Kings will need multiple pairs ready to play against them.

Kings & Coffee! 10 AM puck drop on Pacific time.

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