Angeles Analysis – 81 Down

81 games in the bank. One game to go……until the real season starts, that is.

These are weird games. Easy to see that and easy to admit it. After locking in home-ice advantage on Monday, Tuesday’s game carried what was obviously a different flavor to it.

“There’s no question it’s different than it was [in Edmonton], no one’s going to deny that,” Head Coach Jim Hiller said of the games against Seattle and Calgary.

Now comes the look ahead to tomorrow. The regular-season finale and it comes at home, a rescheduled game from January, postponed due to the wildfires in the area at the time. That game is important. Because of what a first-responders night means to the community. Because the fans deserve a game with low stakes to show their appreciation for a strong season and because the Kings should have a game to give that appreciation right back, for the role the fans have played in helping to establish the best home record in the NHL, before the game changes.

On the ice Thursday, it’s a Kings team that is solidified in its playoff seeding against a Calgary club that suffered a very cruel elimination from playoff yesterday evening. Som, two teams with nothing to play for in the standings.

From the end of that game on, the stakes will no longer be low. So, for the Kings, the name of the game is maintenance.

“We have to think about our lineup on Thursday,” Hiller added. “It’s a long time if you play Monday and then don’t play until, whether we play Sunday or Monday, that’s a week. So, we’ve just got to make sure guys are rested but guys are also on top of their game, so that’ll that’s what we’ll do. Then, we do have some practice time to actually get into a few more things specific for Edmonton.”

We saw the Kings opt against playing four players in Seattle – Quinton Byfield, Anze Kopitar, Drew Doughty and Mikey Anderson.

On Byfield and Doughty, there was zero surprise. Byfield has an upper-body injury and left the game in Edmonton in the second period. While I don’t have a status update for you, even if there isn’t concern about his playoff availability, there was zero reason to risk anything in a meaningless game in Seattle. On Doughty, not playing back-to-back always felt like the plan going in. And it was executed as such.

With Kopitar, as I noted in the game preview yesterday, it made sense to rest him yesterday, considering the reasoning Hiller gave above. That leaves Anderson, who I assume is related to the emergency recall of defenseman Caleb Jones. It’s the time of the year when updates of that variety are harder to come by. Anderson did block a shot in the win over Edmonton that took some time to shake off, but he did finish the game. If that, or anything else, merited a game off in Game 81 then I’m all for that. He’s going to be a high-minute player in the postseason

Those four players, for their own reasons, all make sense for the Kings.

On Thursday, the conversation changes, because of exactly what Hiller spelled out. Anyone who doesn’t play is likely looking at four days in between games. With yesterday’s announcement that the Lakers will open their first-round series with home games on Saturday and Tuesday, that leaves the Kings in a tricky spot. Further complicating the matter are two building events in Edmonton that could impact dates there later in the series. So, we could see either a delayed series start, an extra day in between games, or perhaps both, if the series were to go seven games.

Whether the Kings open on Sunday or Monday remains to be seen, but if it’s Sunday, that would be four days in between games for anyone who does not play on Thursday, but did play in Seattle. Five days if anyone sits out again and as many as six if it turns out to be Monday. With defenseman Joel Edmundson already having a larger gap between his most recent game and his projected availability for Game 1, the Kings are certainly mindful of having too many players managing their rhythm as much as their rest.

For the part of the players, several have noted that they would even prefer to keep playing, to stay in rhythm heading into the final couple of games.

“I’d prefer to play, probably, the rhythm is better for me, personally, so I wouldn’t mind playing some games,” defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov said. “I think our schedule is pretty good right now.”

Others were less committal. For Anderson and Kopitar, neither answered definitively and both wound up sitting out Tuesday’s win over Seattle. Phil Danault called it a “situational” thing. As noted yesterday, Trevor Moore said he’d prefer to play, having already missed a good chunk of time earlier in the season.

Perhaps the player to look at is forward Adrian Kempe.

I wonder if the Kings might have rested Kempe on Tuesday, had Byfield not gotten hurt. I was actually a little bit surprised the team didn’t use its final recall of the regular season on a forward to allow the team to sit one additional player. Kempe seemed to want to play Thursday, specifically, but after going back-to-back, he could reconsider.

“We have the game at home against Calgary, which I feel like would be nice to play,” he said. “You don’t want to have too many days off before the playoffs start.”

That said, though, Kempe is a high-usage player, one of the highest on the Kings in terms of minutes, role and responsibility. Lots of hard minutes in there, though he’s been spared a bit over the last couple of games. Probably one who will have a conversation and then a decision can be made from there. Lots of factors, including the availability of players, a potential final recall and more.

Will share any potential updates that come here over the next 24 hours, between now and tomorrow’s game with Calgary. Despite all that’s happened over the last two days, I’m not going to worry about the Game 1 lineup being in any sort of jeopardy until anything changes for the worse.