Practice 3/5 – MacEwen Practices + Rotating Defensemen, Seeing The Standings, A Bit Of Relief

Happy Sunday, Insiders!

The Kings were back on the ice here this morning at Toyota Sports Performance Center, in between games here at home. The group made it three-straight wins with last night’s 4-2 triumph over St. Louis. None of the three wins have been the prettiest, but that’s the time of the year we’re in. Get the job done, bank points and move on. The Kings have done that as well as most.

Newly acquired forward Zack MacEwen took the ice with the group today for the first time since he joined the organization on Friday’s trade deadline. MacEwen is certainly a big man, standing at 6-3, and brings with him a ton of work ethic, physicality and a willingness to stand up for his teammates. MacEwen is currently recovering from a broken jaw, which has him currently wearing one of those chin protectors on his helmet, but he’s been cleared to play and would be eligible to do so as soon as tomorrow evening.

More with MacEwen to follow on Tuesday’s off day.

For today, here’s how the Kings lined up during this morning’s practice –

Gray: Arvidsson, Byfield, Danault, Fiala, Kempe, Kopitar, Moore
White: Anderson-Dolan, Grundstrom, Iafallo, Kaliyev, Kupari, Lizotte, MacEwen, Vilardi

With 15 forwards, the Kings sometimes opt to dress a “purple” line, which usually signals those out of the lineup, but today they went with seven forwards in gray and eight in white. Not a ton of line-centric drills today anyways, so we’ll see how things look in the morning.

The defensemen rotated through drills today, as they usually do with seven available. Last night’s pairings are below, with more on the expected defensive rotation following.

Anderson – Doughty
Gavrikov – Roy
Edler – Durzi
Walker

Copley / Korpisalo

A reminder that there is no roster limit after the NHL’s trade deadline, so the Kings could in theory have as many players on their roster as they want, as long as they are cap compliant. Currently, it’s 14 forwards, seven defensemen and two goaltenders on the active roster, with forward Trevor Moore currently on injured reserve. Moore continues to progress towards a return to action and the Kings would not need to make any sort of corresponding roster move in order to bring him back into the fold.

Notes –
Rotation On The Backend
A lot of conversation about defensive pairings as of late. And it makes sense, when considering the impactful addition of Vladislav Gavrikov to that group of blueliners.

Gavrikov last night partnered Matt Roy on a very effective second pairing. In more than 15 minutes together at 5-on-5, the Gavrikov/Roy duo – some social media influencers are calling them GavROYkov – had 28 shot attempts for compared to just five against. When looking into the higher-quality opportunities, it was an 18-3 advantage in scoring chances and a 10-1 advantage in high-danger chances. The end result was two goals for, compared to none against.

The debut of GavROYkov, LA's newest celebrity pairing. https://t.co/zly2Se2FIj

— Zach Dooley (@DooleyLAK) March 5, 2023

Moving Gavrikov onto that pairing created a third pairing of veteran defenseman Alex Edler and the versatile Sean Durzi. That pairing got better as the game progressed, but finished a goal down on the wrong side of shot attempts. They had only played one game together prior to last night – a strong performance against Arizona back in December – and now will have to gel as Durzi re-adjusts to the right side.

There’s also defenseman Sean Walker, who played with Gavrikov on Thursday against Montreal but was the odd-man out last night. He won’t sit for too long, meaning that the Kings are planning to mix and match a bit down the stretch, to keep all seven defensemen engaged and active.

“We have and we’re going to need seven defenseman, between now and whenever we’re done playing and we have to keep all of them available and sharp,” McLellan said. “So, I don’t think you’re going to see one d-man sit for six, seven games, it probably won’t happen and therefore the pairs have to have the ability to be flexible.”

One thing that allows the Kings to move pieces around is the versatility of players like Durzi and Walker, who have played both the left and right sides here with the Kings.

Durzi specifically is the individual who the Kings believe can move around the most effectively. He spent almost the entirety of last season on the right side with a variety of partners and almost all of this season on the left side with Roy. In a perfect world, the Kings would have LHD / RHD pairings throughout the lineup, but they’ve worked with the pieces they have throughout the season.

“In retrospect now, we didn’t want to go this long without lefty and righty, we would have preferred the right combination,” McLellan added. “The fact that Durz has been able to play, and Walks in some sense, but Durzi especially can play both sides, he’s been trained that way now. It has allowed us to do what we’re doing now and go back.”

McLellan added that he wants to make sure that Durzi doesn’t lose the ability to play both sides of the ice, and reinforced that he would have no problem moving him between the left and right. Something we’ll look for down the stretch.

Seeing The Standings
As the standings begin to take shape and the playoff race in the Western Conference moves into clearer focus, so does the task at hand.

With 18 games remaining, the Kings are tied for the highest point total in the Pacific Division and one point shy of the highest total in the Western Conference. They currently have a 12-point cushion between themselves and the Nashville Predators, who are currently the last team on the outside looking in, despite a substantial number of games in hand for the Predators. The questions being asked in media availabilities are slowing starting to include the word division as frequently as they are playoffs.

When asked this morning if he looks at the standings with regards to qualifying for the playoffs versus winning the division, McLellan put it simply – neither.

“Don’t look at it either way, right now, just play,” he said. “Play, keep getting better. We’re aware of where teams are, we’re aware of where we are, but we haven’t set a goal of hey, let’s win this or do that. Let’s just keep playing and improve. Get the new guys in right now and make sure that they feel comfortable and figure out how we’re doing things. Stay healthy, stay on top of our game and if we do those things, wins will take care of themselves. We’ll look up at the end of the year and if we’re lucky enough, we’ll play past the regular season.”

The question today came on the heels of a question McLellan was asked the other night, which pertained to if he knew that the Kings were double-dight points clear of a playoff spot. He responded that he did not, but naturally believed it to be a good thing with how quickly things can change.

“I knew we were clear but I didn’t know what the point totals were,” McLellan said. “That’s a good thing for us, but there are no guarantees, because that could erode really quickly. They’re a real good team and we have to hold up our end of the bargain.”

The Kings play Nashville once more this season. They play Calgary twice. Of the teams currently in playoff spots in the Pacific Division, the Kings have four games remaining versus Edmonton, Seattle and Vegas, not to mention three more against playoff teams in the Central Division. Lots of those four-point games to come when looking at the playoff race and the Kings are focused firmly on the team in front of them. Win your games and see what happens.

A Sense Of Relief
Lastly, Insiders, I asked Sean Walker today about the difficulty in hearing his name attached to speculation going into the trade deadline and his relief in being here with the Kings for the longer haul now that the deadline has passed.

Todd McLellan used the phrase “marbles” to describe how the media talks about players around the deadline and from a Kings perspective, it was probably Walker’s name that was thrown around the most via external speculation. It’s easy to forget that these are people and there’s more to it than video-game trading. Now that it’s in the past, sharing Walker’s answer below, edited slightly to merge two answers into one.

Obviously, it’s not something you want to see, but it’s kind of been something all year. Obviously, we’re really deep on the right side, so people are going to make speculations, it’s just kind of the reality of the sport and the spot that our team’s in and it’s a great spot. We’re deep, we have a lot of good players, so it’s a good thing for the organization and at the end of the day, it’s just kind of part of it. It’s not something you want to see when you feel comfortable here and you like where you’re at, but it is part of it. I think everybody kind of has that weight lifted off of them now and we can just focus going forward, make a push here at the end of the season and go into playoffs.

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