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Kings look to salvage trip against Kraken, Canucks

March 31, 2023

Launching into a road trip with the longest points streak in team history at their backs, the Kings have played two games in which they’ve scored one goal and accumulated no points thus far.

They’ll look to salvage their journey with a two-game sojourn in the Pacific Northwest to face the Seattle Kraken on Saturday and the Vancouver Canucks on Sunday.

They’ve played two of the stranger games of their season against those two clubs, in a campaign that’s featured other oddities and that faced significant uncertainty on the injury front Friday.

Back on Nov. 29, the Kings and Kraken played the highest-scoring contest of the 2022-23 season, a 9-8 overtime victory for Seattle, which also won its two other meetings with the Kings this year. Vancouver has also captured both matchups with the Kings this season, including a bizarre 3-2 shootout win on March 18 in which the Kings dominated play for 50 minutes before descending into an abyss.

Though they’ve confronted the unexpected, the Kings, who had been the NHL’s top team by points percentage for two months prior to stumbling out of the gate on this trip, will not over-think their back-to-back set.

“We’ve just got to have a couple goals on the power play, have a good forecheck and keep going here,” winger Alex Iafallo said.

The Kings’ power play, which remained tied for the second-best conversion rate in the NHL entering Friday’s schedule, has sputtered this month. Absent a 4-for-5 performance in a sinewy 7-6 victory over St. Louis, the Kings have only made good on 15.8% of their power plays, which would place them in the bottom quarter of the league.

In Thursday’s 2-0 loss in Edmonton, the Kings were without leading scorer Kevin Fiala, who might have aggravated the lower-body injury he sustained in Colorado on March 9, as well as another potent force, forward Gabe Vilardi. Around 90 seconds into the match, the Kings lost half their top defensive pairing when Mikey Anderson was illegally checked into the boards by Oilers star Connor McDavid.

Anderson should be considered out for the weekend’s action after the Kings recalled defenseman Tobias Bjornfot on an emergency basis, with Vilardi remaining in California and Fiala also appearing questionable at best.

Thursday’s tilt was described as “a hell of a game” by Kings coach Todd McLellan and as having a postseason feel by defenseman Matt Roy, and indeed it impacted the playoff outlook with Edmonton springing over the Kings in the standings.

If just when it appeared the Kings would be healthy again things have been thrown into flux up front and on the blue line, at least the situation in goal has solidified somewhat. After the Kings turned over their tandem completely – they entered the year with Jonathan Quick and Cal Petersen but have been alternating between Pheonix Copley and Joonas Korpisalo of late – McLellan finally gave at least a hint of who his starter might be for the playoffs. Korpisalo started both the first two games on the trip, the first time either netminder has received consecutive nods since his arrival at the beginning of the month.

Though Korpisalo lost both games in regulation, he only ceded three goals and gave the Kings an opportunity in both.

“He made some big saves for us, especially up top, tips and stuff like that. He was making huge saves and that gave us momentum going into each shift,” Iafallo said.

But the Kings have been stymied by Jacob Markstrom and Stuart Skinner in two straight, and now will likely face a nemesis in net who has almost always elevated his game against his former club, Martin Jones. Three of his 25 wins, his best total since 2018-19, have come against the Kings this season and he has 22 career victories against the Kings, eight more than he’s earned against any other franchise, in 32 decisions.

Defenseman Vince Dunn has been an unlikely scoring leader for Seattle, a hair ahead of forward Jared McCann. Former Colorado Avalanche forwards Joonas Donskoi and Andre Burakovsky are both out of action. Donskoi hasn’t played yet this season due to a concussion and Burakovsky has been recovering from a lower-body injury he sustained on Feb. 7.

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Vancouver will deploy one of hockey’s top scorers in the middle and best playmakers on the back end. Elias Pettersson’s 95 points have him tied for the fourth most of any center this season and the seventh most of any skater. Quinn Hughes’ 65 assists represent the NHL’s sixth-best total and trail only Erik Karlsson’s 69 among rearguards.

Though the Canucks careened and skidded through most of the season, which led to a coaching change and the departure via trade of leading goal-scorer Bo Horvat, they’ve been much sharper lately. Since returning from injury on Feb. 27, only two goalies have more victories than former Junior King and current Canuck Thatcher Demko. To that point, the Canucks ranked 27th in points percentage, but since then they have posted the fourth-best mark league-wide.

KINGS AT SEATTLE

When: Saturday, 7 p.m.

Where: Climate Pledge Arena

TV/Radio: KCOP (Ch. 13)/iHeart Radio

KINGS AT VANCOUVER

When: Sunday, 5 p.m.

Where: Rogers Arena

TV/Radio: Bally Sports West/iHeart Radio

Orange County Register

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Kings look to salvage trip against Kraken, Canucks

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