With one game remaining before Friday’s trade deadline, the Kings will take the ice Thursday against the New York Islanders, one of the top 10 teams in the NHL by points percentage.
Which version of the Kings would face the Isles remained to be seen. Kevin Fiala, Andrei Kuzmenko, Joel Armia and Quinton Byfield should be considered out. Drew Doughty, Darcy Kuemper, Trevor Moore and Jacob Moverare were all options after missing Monday’s loss to Colorado.
New York has been dealing with three players who were deemed out for the season long ago – Kyle Palmieri, Pierre Engvall and Alexander Romanov – and an injury to goalie Semyon Varlamov.
Yet the Isles rolled into a back-to-back set with the Ducks and Kings as winners of five straight games and eight of their past 10. The Kings hobble onward with six losses in their last seven bouts as part of a stretch where they’ve taken just six of 19 decisions.
While the Isles’ bench boss, legendary goalie Patrick Roy, has been comfortable in his seat, D.J. Smith’s chair still shares the warmth of his and predecessor Jim Hiller’s derriéres following Sunday’s coaching change.
While Hiller was loath to play younger players and often overextended some veterans in the process, Smith had little choice in his head coaching debut with three players making their NHL debuts and a variety of call-ups from earlier in the campaign – like Taylor Ward and Samuel Helenius – already in the mix.
Smith even put his money where his mouth was when he spoke about Helenius, a fourth-line center, matching up against anyone, deploying him against Nathan MacKinnon’s line Monday. The results were mixed at most – MacKinnon set up the game-winning goal and had nearly gotten it himself earlier after Helenius lost a defensive-zone draw – but the ethos was clear.
“We have one chance, with where we are at in this season right now, and it’s for our team to get in the playoffs as a team,” Smith said. “If we want to play at the pace that I expect them to play at, to forecheck and to hit, everyone’s going to have to take a little bit shorter shifts, everyone’s going to have to play harder while they’re on the ice. We’re going to need all four lines. One night, one guy might be in one night, one guy might be out, but I wouldn’t count us out.”
Yet Kings fans shouldn’t get too excited about this new trend of spreading out minutes. Smith ran the defensive deployment during last year’s catastrophic first round of the playoffs and throughout this season, and Game 1 of his tenure was not materially different on that front than Hiller’s final appearance.
Cody Ceci led all Kings in time on ice in both the workmanlike shutout of Calgary, essentially a 1-0 game that featured no penalties for the PK to pad his minutes, and then again against Colorado. He was on for three of four goals against, and was left staring at the scoreboard as if it were Aurora Borealis after getting worked by Nathan MacKinnon on Devon Toews’ game-winner.
The rationale for signing Ceci, a favorite of first-year Kings general manager Ken Holland whom he also acquired in Edmonton, was that he would help suppress goals. He has – for the Kings. He has scored just once all season. Meanwhile Brandt Clarke’s modest but respectable total of eight is as many as Ceci, Doughty, Moverare, Mikey Anderson and Joel Edmundson have tallied combined. One more goal will add Brian Dumoulin to that list and cracking double digits will give Clarke the same total as every other Kings rearguard in sum.
Worse, Ceci hasn’t held up his end of the defensive bargain either, making his C- midseason grade seem rather generous. He’s played 922 minutes five-on-five this season and of the 101 defensemen with 900+ minutes logged 5v5, only six have a worse goals-for percentage than Ceci.
The Isles’ Ryan Pulock and Matthew Schaefer are at the more favorable end of that spectrum, each placing in the top 14 league-wide. Schaefer, 18, was the No. 1 overall pick in June’s draft, and he has delivered with 20 goals, putting him on track to break the single-season record for goals by a rookie defenseman, set by the rival New York Rangers’ icon Brian Leetch in 1988.
New York Islanders at Kings
When: 6:30 p.m. Thursday
Where: Crypto.comArena
TV: ESPN
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